It's an ominous phrase, but does it mean anything???
Is there any basis in fact?
What would it take to drain the reward pool?
Well first you need to look at the composition of the reward pool. (this will change over time but the basic principles and baselines will remain roughly the same)
I ran through the trending page right down to the very end to determine its composition:
$150-$175 bracket - 4 posts
$100-$150 bracket - 4 posts
$ 50-$100 bracket - 10 posts
$ 25-$ 50 bracket - 50 posts
$ 20-$ 25 bracket - 40 posts
$ 15-$ 20 bracket - 60 posts
$ 10-$ 15 bracket - 50 posts
$ 5-$ 10 bracket -160 posts
$ 1-$ 5 bracket - 90 posts
I have ignored posts under $1 for this exercise as when added together they only amount to less than $100
In total the reward pool for the time that I was performing this exercise amounts to roughly $7 500
In that case then its a simple breakdown:
Roughly:
20 posts > $50 = 25% of reward pool
50 posts $25 - $50 = 25% of reward pool
100 posts $15 - $25 = 25% of reward pool
300 posts < $15 = 25% of reward pool
So here we have the cold hard rounded off numbers of how the reward pool is currently structured. These percentages and numbers should be reasonably accurate for any given day, although the exact numbers will vary given the fluctuations in the reward pool size as the market cap of STEEM fluctuates.
So now that the numbers are out, lets work out exactly how many posts of what value range would it require to significantly "drain the rewards pool" and by what amount. i.e. when does the effect become really noticeable to every user.
Is it 1%, 5%, 10% 25% even 50%??? Lets discuss it in the comments.