STEEM as a passive income from a Investor's Perspective.

Content creators of STEEM may get angry at some investors who have delegated to bots rather than curating better contents. Some investors might be busy with their daily life and don't have time for curating. However, investors can still delegate to projects such as @curie, @ocd-resteem, @minnowsupport, @utopian-io, @dtube etc. without any profit. However, some of these curators shares curation profit with delegators.

The passive investor's choice of delegation- charity type (i.e. no reward at all) versus profit type (i.e. most profit as possible) depends on the personality, their purchase price and situations.

For example, a whale may have bought 100K STEEM at $400K. Now as STEEM price has dropped to $1.5, he may find it justified to delegate to the most profitable bot to get some of his loss back. Another whale who bought 100K STEEM at $10K, may care more about future. He may curate aggressively to improve the perception of the STEEM. A big whale (e.g. holds 1M SP) who got STEEM through early mining, investing, co-founding, may not bother about immediate profit, will delegate to major projects and curation trail for perception improvement of STEEM.

Whatever, content creators think of them, in a capitalistic market, all the factors are usually priced in. If the majority of passive whales delegate to curation trails without any profit (i.e. charity type), content creators would have definitely benefited from it.

But it may or may not appreciate STEEM's price. It could increase STEEM price by creating positive perception on that whales care about good contents. On the other hands, creators could sell the rewards and thus increase supply of STEEM which can lead STEEM's price to decline.

In another scenario, a large number of whales (i.e. I believe this is the current scenario) delegates to bots for maximum profits, creators earn less from those whale's curtation. Supply of STEEM stays low, price may appreciate. Or, perception gets worse, STEEM's price declines.

However, a sheer bull or bear market of Bitcoin is enough to control to STEEM's price rather than having any of effect of perception at all.

The bottom line is to raise STEEM price through incentives for all passive investors, active curating whales and content creators. It's beyond algorithm's capacity to change human's biases. Altruist whales will always curate without profit seeking while profiteering whales will find loophole to earn maximum profit on their investment. The optimum algorithm will keep happy all stake-holders to some extents.

Upcoming SMTs can answer some of the dilemma about curation and rewardpool. Some SMTs will use the similar stake-weighted voting as it is used now in Steemit with STEEM. Some SMTs will use one account one vote (1A1V) policy to reward their contributors. Some SMTs may use linear curve for voting, others may use super-linear. It will be wild wild west but breeding ground for best adapting algorithm to reward the contributions.

Therefore, STINC and community should concentrate on developments and economics to lure investors to buy STEEM. After all, newly minted STEEM has to be bought by new investors and held for long term. Investors need incentive of different type- good ROI, prestige, even altruism etc. Not buying STEEM to take a stake and depending on others to uplift, is sometimes a hard sale. Therefore, everybody who cares about STEEM should also think about being an investor too. If a top-notch content creator becomes an investor, it can only help the STEEM platform- other content creators and fellow investors.

Disclaimer: This opinion is not a financial advice, it my personal perspective and opinion. Please seek professionals for financial decisions.

Image sources: Most images are open sourced (e.g. Pixabay, Wikimedia etc.) with Creative common license. Some images are used with due courtesy to respected owners.

Thanks for reading.
@riseofth
Cryptominer since 2013, occasional trader and tech blogger