Source

Short Answer: No

But it's about 113% per year!

Right, but 90% goes to steam power holders. Thus, they only experience an inflation rate of around 11-12% if they are completely inactive on the platform.

I've mentioned vests before, and I believe that they are very important to understand when assessing the value of Steem in the future. They represent your "share" in Steem. Your share stays constant, aside from the 11-12% inflation which goes to content creators and curators.

Well, clearly this is a pay-to-play model and you'll need to invest a fortune to keep up with that inflation rate.

That's actually not the case at all. By simply being consistently active on the platform as only a curator with a good amount of Steem Power, you can pretty much rack up enough curation rewards on a daily basis to keep pace.

Let's take a look at a breakdown with the help of @jesta's http://steemstats.com

As mentioned on the site, the percentages may be a little bit off. However, let's use these numbers for our example, even if they are likely on the higher side.

I'm currently earning about 73 SP per day via interest. That means I'd need to earn about 8.5 SP per day to keep up with inflation.

How am I doing?

I wasn't even active yesterday, aside from a blog post, and I'm still averaging nearly 7 SP a day. I also don't even try to game the system. I don't wait until 15-30 minutes, I just let the up votes fly whenever. If I tried to vote to earn, I could easily keep up with inflation.

Of course, you can also post as well, and may earn enough from your content to not only keep up, by blow past the inflation rate.

One may look back at the stats above, and say that I am earning ~500 Steem per week, while my power down rate is ~130 per week and think that this system is rigged so that one receives infinite Steem. That is not the case. Your Steem will deplete after 104 weeks so long as you are not active, as your vests are what are being withdrawn. This means that your withdrawals will go up each week in order to keep up with inflation.

When inflation goes specifically to special interests, as is the case with fiat currencies, the inflation pool only ends up benefiting a few at the top. But when inflation is distributed based on participation and subjective valuations, then everyone has access to the inflation pool and the benefits therein.

Some content creators will do exceptionally well on this platform over time. Their vest earn-rate may surpass your steady perseverance. However, your share of Steem will not be diluted, so long as you are active.

Personally, I am closing in on nearly 1/10,000th of vested Steem. That may not seem like much but if the Steem market cap were the size of Bitcoin my 13.6k SP would be worth about $1 million. I know that seems crazy ambitious, but it's not really, especially when you consider the value behind established large social media platforms. For example, Facebook's value is about 50X larger than Bitcoin. Clearly, the sky is the limit.

Remember, Steemit is only the first application for Steem, and there are many more incredible things to come. We shouldn't limit ourselves to the value of Bitcoin or social media platforms when looking off into the future. We should be aiming for something much, much bigger. We may not get there, but we have a real strong foundation here for something extraordinarily special.

Inflate on!

Meet me and @missjessica

Steem Highway v. 1.1 Chrome Extension