I've been active on Steemit for one month now. To say I've been fascinated with the money side of Steemit would be an understatement.

• I gave away 465 SBD to people who answered the #bitcoinpizza challenge of "Where does the money come from?"
• I wrote about a script to hide the $ amounts on the website, which I used for 24 hours here and here.
• I mentioned how a single founder was positioned to make $700k a week, if they powered down their Steem Power.
• I talked about the Steem Power "interest rate" here and here (it's not really an interest rate, but more accurately a protection against share dilution).

Well, now I'm really digging in. I wanted to know an answer to a really important question:

On the net, are more people buying into Steem Power with real money or are they cashing out their STEEM and SBD for real money?

The answer to this question, I think, is really important because it will be an indicator for the health of the STEEM cryptocurrency. If too many people are dumping beyond what the demand for STEEM is, the price will go down. If a lot of people are buying and powering up, the price will go up as liquid supply goes down. That would also indicate a demand for Steem Power and influence on the network.

So here's what I did to answer the question. Using Piston by @xeroc, I started analyzing three known exchange accounts: poloniex, bittrex, and blocktrades with commands like this:

piston history poloniex --types transfer --limit 3000 > poloniex_transfer_data.txt

I ran this for each account to create three text files.

From there, I modified the data a bit so it only includes transfers from 7/31/2016 to 8/6/2016.

Then I worked the data in PHP to keep track of the transfers to and from the exchanges to figure out the net amount going from an account to an exchange (which is a strong indication they are selling their STEEM/SBD for BTC/USD) or from an exchange to an account (a strong indication they just bought some STEEM/SBD to power up).

Now, these numbers might surprise you. There has been a lot of talk about Steemit being a scam or a ponzi scheme. There's also some who realize the importance of start up capital and portfolio diversification. Before showing the raw data, I'd like to give my thoughts on these points.

• Scam
  Not likely, IMO. Years and years of development efforts and expertise have gone into building this platform. Every indication I see points to this being a long-term play.
• Ponzi Scheme
  From a certain perspective, life is a ponzi scheme. To me, the only way this one makes sense is if the value of Steem permanently crashes in the future (and was intended to do so) and those who invested later can't get their value back out. If the value does go down, it could also just be seen as a failed investment. I don't see any indication this was specifically designed as a Ponzi Scheme unless the large holders are able to power down so much as to destroy the market before others can ever gain value. So far, IMO, the whales are too rational for this to happen as it would also destroy the rest of their value in this platform which might be worth much more in the future.
• Whales Selling Their STEEM/SBD
  I see this as a good thing! If the market can bear it, this means STEEM/SBD is being distributed to more people interested in buying it. This means the centralization of wealth problem is diminishing. It also means those people are smart, rational actors. If they had a net worth of, say, $5k before the STEEM price went way up, and now they have, say, a networth of $1M, any financial advisor worth a damn would be screaming for them to diversify because more than 99% of their wealth would be in one place.
• Steemit, the Company, Selling Their STEEM/SBD
  This, I think, is important. Companies growing at this rate need capital for operations, marketing, support, and development. If they weren't obtaining spendable real-world currency to pay for the things they need to grow, we should all be worried about the future of this platform.
• New People Buying STEEM/SBD
  This, I also see as a good thing, provided Steemit is not a scam or a ponzi scheme. As people buy STEEM/SBD, the demand goes up which drives up the price (or supports the current price) of STEEM. That benefits everyone who is powered up and believes in the long-term value of Steemit and will provide more motivations to continue creating great content and inviting their friends to join.

So now that I've given my opinions on what these various transfer activities mean for us all, let me again state my assumptions:

Withdrawing STEEM/SBD to send to an exchange = money out of the steemit ecosystem to speculators and lower demand for Steem Power

Depositing STEEM/SBD from an exchange = money into the steemit ecosystem and higher demand for Steem Power

To illistrate these points, when calculating totals, I've removed the exchange account balances (otherwise everything would just add up to zero). Here's the raw data for you to enjoy:

Exchange Transfer Activity from 7/31/2016 to 8/6/2016

------------------- Exchanges --------------------

@poloniex STEEM transfer total: 282,587.441
@poloniex SBD transfer total: -4,342.879
@bittrex STEEM transfer total: -204,512.947
@bittrex SBD transfer total: -12,371.477
@blocktrades STEEM transfer total: 107,614.434
@blocktrades SBD transfer total: 19,096.788

--------------- Total Transferred ----------------

Total STEEM transferred: -185,688.928
Total SBD transferred: -2,382.432
Total USD transferred: ($   391,971.82)

-- Total Transferred, Excluding Steemit Account --

Total STEEM transferred (excluding steemit): -35,688.928
Total SBD transferred (excluding steemit): -2,382.432
Total USD transferred (excluding steemit): ($    76,971.82)

Accounts withdrawing: 1107
Average withdrawal amount: ($       784.70)
Median withdrawal amount: ($        17.78)

Accounts depositing: 324
Average deposit amount:  $       430.62
Median deposit amount:  $       161.05

Ratio of withdrawals to deposits: 3.42/1

TOP 50 WITHDRAWALS

	Account	Net Transfer Amount
1	@steemit:	($ 315,000.00)
2	@berniesanders:	($ 35,710.20)
3	@braxton:	($ 22,189.73)
4	@shidan:	($ 21,086.40)
5	@tratorin:	($ 14,359.26)
6	@enki:	($ 14,288.30)
7	@stephencurry:	($ 12,600.00)
8	@rainman:	($ 12,021.18)
9	@smooth:	($ 10,500.00)
10	@pharesim:	($ 9,030.00)
11	@federicopistono:	($ 8,046.80)
12	@steempty:	($ 7,744.10)
13	@wackou:	($ 7,436.22)
14	@wang:	($ 7,343.70)
15	@fuzzyvest:	($ 7,343.69)
16	@marketmaker:	($ 7,201.80)
17	@riverhead:	($ 6,776.15)
18	@calaber24p:	($ 6,358.65)
19	@katecloud:	($ 5,825.57)
20	@kevinpham20:	($ 5,692.43)
21	@arsahk:	($ 5,576.00)
22	@clayop:	($ 5,451.84)
23	@dragonho:	($ 5,228.32)
24	@dashpaymag:	($ 5,213.80)
25	@ozchartart:	($ 5,026.07)
26	@au1nethyb1:	($ 4,795.65)
27	@fairytalelife:	($ 4,689.73)
28	@coldstorage1:	($ 4,641.96)
29	@stellabelle:	($ 4,590.00)
30	@dele-puppy:	($ 4,557.56)
31	@witness.svk:	($ 4,519.48)
32	@silversteem:	($ 4,360.00)
33	@dana-edwards:	($ 4,250.00)
34	@anastacia:	($ 4,175.55)
35	@rossco99:	($ 3,869.07)
36	@abdul:	($ 3,679.94)
37	@recursive:	($ 3,629.72)
38	@badassmother:	($ 3,593.03)
39	@nextgencrypto:	($ 3,590.00)
40	@jacor:	($ 3,417.00)
41	@manthostsakirid:	($ 3,400.00)
42	@graavor:	($ 3,241.18)
43	@fyrstikken:	($ 3,117.25)
44	@joseph:	($ 3,109.45)
45	@cryptogee:	($ 2,975.00)
46	@steempower:	($ 2,905.55)
47	@steve-walschot:	($ 2,889.20)
48	@etherdesign:	($ 2,865.52)
49	@shawn-brewer:	($ 2,817.44)
50	@nolimit:	($ 2,746.15)

TOP 50 DEPOSITS (powering up?)

	Account	Net Transfer Amount
1	@btcmsia:	$ 35,018.68
2	@glitterfart:	$ 31,269.93
3	@freeyourmind:	$ 30,136.01
4	@analisa:	$ 27,044.44
5	@james212:	$ 20,560.61
6	@imadev:	$ 18,394.00
7	@cyber:	$ 15,566.23
8	@ilovesteemit:	$ 14,842.67
9	@smooth-c:	$ 12,860.00
10	@jl777:	$ 12,759.67
11	@juneaugoldbuyer:	$ 10,309.55
12	@cryptoprometheus:	$ 9,449.98
13	@inventor:	$ 8,499.99
14	@sigmajin:	$ 8,399.96
15	@ramta:	$ 7,713.19
16	@somebody:	$ 7,608.67
17	@asd91:	$ 7,427.27
18	@laonie:	$ 6,291.60
19	@coolspeed:	$ 6,027.97
20	@livecoin.net:	$ 5,830.59
21	@aglo:	$ 5,651.44
22	@hipster:	$ 5,623.65
23	@james-show:	$ 5,330.70
24	@asmolokalo:	$ 5,190.47
25	@icfiedler:	$ 5,175.92
26	@mughat:	$ 4,781.55
27	@neptun:	$ 4,608.86
28	@smooth-e:	$ 4,249.99
29	@leon-fu:	$ 4,199.92
30	@mr11acdee:	$ 3,806.02
31	@sextusempiricus:	$ 3,564.00
32	@xpilar:	$ 3,407.47
33	@arcurus:	$ 3,233.45
34	@thisvsthis:	$ 3,149.98
35	@steemrollin:	$ 3,143.66
36	@bobbylee:	$ 3,127.50
37	@cryptorambler:	$ 3,118.17
38	@foma17:	$ 3,025.02
39	@bonface:	$ 2,713.18
40	@geoffrey:	$ 2,553.74
41	@freedomengineer:	$ 2,519.98
42	@yng-entrepreneur:	$ 2,452.09
43	@fabio:	$ 2,297.12
44	@paws1t1veev:	$ 2,144.98
45	@unobservant:	$ 2,124.99
46	@xaero1:	$ 2,093.68
47	@tosch:	$ 1,973.98
48	@paco:	$ 1,973.92
49	@inchonbitcoin:	$ 1,890.00
50	@platoscave:	$ 1,805.94

This is the output of a PHP script I wrote which analyzes the three files created via Piston. I may open source it after getting feedback from this post and to ensure I didn't screw something up (which is very possible).

As you can see, some accounts are dropping some serious money into STEEM. Also, Steemit, as a company, is cashing out some big money as well, along with some whales.

What does this mean for the future? I don't really know, but it's something I plan to keep a close eye on. I understand this is a sensative subject. Some may prefer this information not be so easily available (you don't publicly broadcast your bank account balance or your investment portfolio changes, do you?). At the same time, this is a public blockchain and, IMO, people should be making informed, rational decisions about whether or not they want to invest in this platform over the long term. Data like this can help people make better decisions.

If your first reaction to this data is envy at other peoples' success, please don't bother commenting. That negativity won't cause you or anyone around you to prosper.

If you appreciate this, I'll consider doing it every week. Give me a follow to stay informed.