'Throughout Steem's history, the rate of inflation has been reduced, but this has failed to prevent the price of STEEM from falling.'
Remember this could be attributed to the fact the CEO was incompetent and was selling Steem relentlessly instead of selling decent amounts at 5 and 6 dollars to provide funds going foward. He failed to plan for the future where as we wont. I always see projects with great tech and then ruined with bad economics. They produce massive token amounts because they plan on some mad adoption in future which never materialises. The only way to maintain value is to keep scarcity. Its the only way and is why XRP and hundreds of coins like it TRX etc etc will never maintain a value because they are just not scarce and never will be. XMR and all POW coins mined into existence with small token caps are the only ones that will maintain value long term IMO. Investors will then look at a coins history and say ok its been going 5 or 10 years and maintained a long term trend, ie its not going away and this then gives them the confidence to invest.
Indeed, Steemit was selling a lot of STEEM to cover development costs. Do you remember the time they laid off more than 70 people? Later, a much smaller team was able to deliver a lot more. And yet, we still don't have SMTs...
yeah i know, as soon as the inevitable bear market took hold it was like uh oh and investor confidence went with it. Utter incompetence he just didn't care one hoot about the project only the money and fame.