If you're here, you already know the crazy run that Steem has been on. Steem is currently the #3 crypto behind Bitcoin and Ethereum, pretty heady company. That said, it might be useful to note the supply/demand economics of the current situation to see exactly why Steem is going up in price.

Theory #1 - Steem is genuinely interesting

There's a lot of merit to this, in that people want to be able to upvote interesting content and get more weight to their votes. This is clearly different from reddit and there may be enough people already that desire to curate content that they've bought Steem to convert to Steem Power and use it to participate here at steemit.

Theory #2 - Steem is mostly illiquid.

We know that about 80% of the total Steem was pre-mined and that about 10% of the total Steem was given out on July 4. Furthermore, we know that most of the Steem is actually not very liquid in that it's in Steem Power and not Steem tokens. This causes a short supply leading to a higher price. This may also explain the large market cap as so little of it is available for sale.

Theory #3 - Steem is gaining from disaffected crypto-coins

We know the problems that have been around ethereum and bitcoin. Perhaps those people are coming to Steem as there's something genuinely useful being produced.

What do you think? Why is Steem going up and down in value so much?