Steem Econometrics: Largest Net Transfers

markgritter (59)in #econometrics • 6 years ago (edited)

There are four major mechanisms of value transfer in Steem:

Transfer of money to and from exchanges, where it may be bought by other Steem members or by speculators not involved with Steem directly.
Peer-to-peer transfer of money directly within Steem; contests, giveaways, bidbot payments, SBI share pruchases, etc.
New VESTS created as producer rewards for witnesses
New STEEM, SBD, and VESTS created as author and curation rewards

We can treat #4 as a value transfer by comparing the share of VESTS owned with the share of rewards obtained. If everybody voted for themselves, then author and curation rewards distribution would exactly match VESTS distribution. But those with the most VESTS do not receive a proportionate share of author and curation rewards. Here are some stats for the week of July 20th-26th:

Category	Actual rewards	Expected rewards	Delta
Insiders	0	152780	-152780 STEEM
Top 1% accounts	187582	198886	- 11303 STEEM
1-2% accounts	10519	58883	+48363 STEEM
2-3% accounts	4944	30528	+25584 STEEM
3-4% accounts	2864	22211	+19347 STEEM

The large amount of VESTS held by insider accounts (39%) that do not receive posting rewards benefits all the smaller accounts. We can treat this as a transfer of value, as if the VESTS created rewards, but those rewards were given to other accounts.

We could probably divide up witness rewards in the same fashion, but almost all of them go to top 1% accounts anyway.

Here is schematic showing the largest net wealth transfers (denominated in STEEM) for the week of July 20th, between classes of accounts partitioned by wealth.

(When constructing the graph I collapsed top 1% with the insider accounts.)

This week had lots of money move out of the direct STEEM ecosystem and into exchanges; even the long tail of small accounts was a net "seller". The major net recipient of internal transfers was the top 1%.