For anyone wondering why STEEM has been going up as the entire market is in the red, we've just been listed on Binance, one of the largest exchanges in the world by volume.
I have previously highlighted how low the liquidity of STEEM really is in proportion to the total supply. Out of the 263.4 million in existence, 187.5 million is currently locked up in Steem Power, which takes 3 months to be released. That leaves only 79.5 million actually available for trading, out of which Bittrex has 28.7 million, Poloniex 14.4 million, and now Binance 1.3 million.
What this implies is that STEEM actually has a realistic, liquid market cap of only around $400 million, and that despite the run up from under $1 to now $5 that we've seen over the past couple of months, there are still no real whales in this market trading STEEM as a speculative asset.
If you look at the 24hr volume, it's only recently picked up into the 3 digit millions, having spent most of the year in the low 2 digit millions. The volume you typically see for coins really being pumped is in the multiple billions. That would require the entire liquid supply to be traded multiple times over in a day, or for the price to be significantly higher.
Binance is an exchange that is notorious as a playground for whales, perhaps it's a sign that the time has finally come for STEEM to take off.