There is a certain amount of steem made everyday (inflation) and this is what you use to vote with - this steem are inflationary and will lose a percentage of value every year - you can do two things with your steem 1. Change them into steem dollars and exchange them for real dollars and an exchange like Binance (steem is pegged to US dollar ) 2. Buy steem power - steem power allows you to get more power and earn more money because the more steem power you have the more steem you get when you upload content or vote on content. So with this inflationin steem everyone gets paid and since more and more people are coming onto steem the little bit of inflation is not hurting anyone because the site is growing bigger than the inflation gap. Very ingenius idea.