As the STEEM acquisition fiasco unfolds, the exchanges that powered up user funds are being forced to acquire liquid STEEM to fulfill user withdrawals. The initial STEEM held in users’ accounts was powered up and is now inaccessible for 13 weeks.
Exchanges’ need to buy liquid STEEM to support withdrawals could be one of the reasons for why STEEM is up on the 7-day chart by more than 15% when both ETH and BTC 7-day prices are down by more than 10%. While Binance, Huobi, and Poloniex powered-up user funds, Bithumb, Upbit, and Bittrex did not. Therefore, only 3 of the 6 primary STEEM-pair exchanges have user funds unlocked.
Now, this is the case:
The above wallet belongs to Huobi.
Millions of liquid STEEM is being pulled from Upbit, Bittrex, and Bithumb so that Huobi can support potential user withdrawals. Binance’s wallet had a similar ledger a few days ago.
As exchanges will not have the complete amount of user-owned STEEM unlocked for more than 90 days, and given that STEEM owners are withdrawing funds to their wallets to vote out Justin Sun’s control of the chain, it’s likely that exchanges will have to buy millions of more STEEM to fulfill withdrawal requests.
