Sort:  

A limited amount of tokens are released each day(57,600 I believe). These token are awarded based on the participation that day. If there is one post and one vote that day, then all the rewards would go to those 2 people (1 person if they voted for themselves). The tokens have a limited supply and are traded on exchanges which determine their value. Here is a site (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/views/all/) that tracks the value of crypto-currencies. You can see that Steem is currently 10th (as of this writing).

As an invester, I can't buy any of steem because the trading volume is so low, yet the market cap is 18 million. This doesn't make any sense. Basically that 18 million is locked up in steem power so investors can't buy it. So right now there is shortage of steem and that's why the price is so high. When the time comes for payouts, the price of steem should come down a lot because only then, there will be people trying to sell steem.

speculation capital..