May 1st Steem Powered Up day or No Sell Day: Opportunity and problems?

I came across a blog about power up day on May 1st. Here are the conditions:

Power up All the Steem Power you are willing to Stake in the Steem network

Do not Sell or trade Steem on Any of the Exchanges

For those that do need Steem for daily necessities, try to sell your Steem the day before or the day after, but not on May 1st.

Here is a problem with the first condition "Power up All the Steem Power you are willing to Stake in the Steem network". If somebody have already powered down few weeks back, then it will basically reset the timer. Say, he/she has 4 weeks left for full power down, each portion is 1K Steem. Then it will reset power down to 13 weeks, he/she will get 307.7 Steem per week which is totally different outcome.

Then there is an interesting comment:

CANCEL ALL SELL ORDERS ON EXCHANGES

There are some secret group in forums that choose a coin, set up walls, cancel orders, pump the coins and then dump the coins. Unnoticed traders can caught up in the pump and dump, loose money.

I wonder if a large number of traders and sellers of steem community decided to follow the steps, what can happen on May 1st. If Steem price goes up by 10 or 12%, then unsuspected traders may buy it thinking that a good news or upgrades are coming up. Then next day, when Steem comes back 8-10%, he/she may keep holding Steem since his/her initial goal was to catch the momentum and sell higher.

Cryptocurrency market is ripe with manipulations. Most exchanges report bloated volumes. Some exchanges use bots for selling and buying to show volumes to lure investors/traders. Few BTC or ETH whales can move an altcoin market if they want to move and make profit. Some brag news to pump their coins such as @dan' mentioning Trump administration's interest in EOS on twitter. Now EOS is eternal bull market along with BTC.

Therefore, it could be risky to inspire "CANCEL ALL YOUR SELL ORDER" or "Don't sell Steem on that particular day". It may look like a pump and dump opportunity for some traders.

On the other hand, A pure powerup day would be awesome. For example, everybody will powerup few Steem on that day. It does not matter when they buy Steem such as 5 days earlier or a month back. Some can move a little portion of liquid Steem from the exchange and power it up. Some may sacrifice selling on that day and keep few Steem Powerup for few more weeks.

Anyway, Steem has higher sell pressure than most of the top coins. Steem is sold regularly by STINC to maintain their cost. It looks like an ICO sell in very longer time span (i.e. more than three years). There are content creators who need to sell to fund some of their living expenses. There are also early adopters who may have bought large Steem at cheaper price and may sell their profit from delegation.

Steem needs higher inflation to reward its holders and content creators. In case of ICOs, investors who have bought at a certain price, they are reluctant to sell at lower price. Therefore, with no inflation and holding incentive (e.g. avoid loss and sell at much more higher price), most ICOs do well in bull market. Examples are Cardano, IOTA, Nano etc.

The only way to increase Steem's price is to bring new investors or users who want to power up Steem. The rate of new users and investors buying up Steem has to be higher than selling pressure on Steem.

With more upgrades such as MIRA and SMT, Steem will become scalable and can handle more transactions. With exciting developments on DApps and easy onboarding, Steem will bring in new users and investors which will increase Steem's price. The best way to raise Steem price is to bring in new users and investors: growth of the blockchain. Before that Seem needs to build the infrastructure so that growth can become smooth and frictionless.

Disclaimer: This opinion is not a financial advice, it my personal perspective and opinion. Please seek professionals for financial decisions.

Image sources: Most images are open sourced (e.g. Pixabay, Wikimedia etc.) with Creative common license. Some images are used with due courtesy to respected owners.

Thanks for reading.
@riseofth
Cryptominer since 2013, occasional trader and tech blogger