This isn't a post to call anyone out, but I just wanted to share something that's been bothering me lately. I've seen some people throwing around numbers like wow my 1000 token of ABC is now worth 300 Steem, I can't believe it.
Buying and Selling your Steem-Engine Tokens (Current Token Value)
If you figure out what token it is please don't share in the comments, because it's not the token that matters it's the concept.
If you wanted to sell 5000 of this ABC token you wouldn't take 0.047*5000 and say my 5000 tokens are worth almost 250 Steem because after the initial 2 ABC tokens that are being sold at that price the value drops to 0.03752. If you just dumped 5000 ABC tokens on the market and wanted to sell them as quickly as possible you'd dump the price to at least 0.03722 and probably further.
This would cause the price of ABC to instantly drop at least 21%.
The same can be said if you'd use a "buy it now" approach going the other way. For around 100 - 250 Steem ($20 or $30) you could easily boost the price of ABC pretty significantly.
How to Buy and Sell Steem-Engine Tokens
If you're holding a large amount of a token and would like to sell it for whatever reason instead of just setting the bid at a certain price and walking away, it would be better to buy a small amount each day for a few weeks.
This will prevent you from creating a buy-wall and then actually causing the price of ABC to slowly tick grow over the next few weeks because you're creating a support price for the token.
It works the same way if you're looking to dump some coins quickly, but just sit it at the cheapest price and walk away. You'll actually drive down the value of your investment by creating a sell wall or resistance in the price of the token which will then cause it to lose value over the next couple of weeks as sellers stack in front of your price.
By buying or selling a smaller % over the course of a few weeks you're less likely to affect the current price of the token too much and still get a better price, on average, for the value of your collection or hodlings.
Playing both Sides
If you're feeling up to it you can also do something I've done the past few weeks and months is if you find a coin that has enough of a spread (I usually look for at least 10%) you can place a small buy order and sell order and can be buying tokens for lets say around 0.03 Steem and then selling them at the same time for around 0.04 Steem.
Granted you only make 4 or 5 Steem a trade and it's really not worth the time it takes to find the opportunity, but it's something I've enjoyed doing to earn some "free" Steem relatively risk free. A few times I've even forgotten about my trades and come back to a token that's actually gone up another 20-30% in value and made some nice profits.
Once again because of the small depth and volume of most of these markets, if you do this with a token that has 0 volume you'll just cause the gap to close as people stack in front of you on both sides. The goal with doing this is not to get greedy and to take a small quick profit.
Another thing to point out, when I say small trade, I usually only use around 10 Steem of the token on both sides. I may check it a few times a day just in case someone moves a small amount in front of me I can lower or increase my bids, and other times, I'll just simply cancel the trade as the opportunity is gone.
In Conclusion
This article kind of took a turn from where I originally intended it to go, but if you have 1000 Steem worth of a community token and the depth of the market at that price can't support 1000 Steem, then it's not really worth 1000 Steem, but something either a little or lot less.
I've seen this a lot in the Splinterlands market as well so just be wary when trying to calculate the value of your crypto assets or collection, if you need to liquidate quickly it may take a huge hit and if you can sit on the item for a while and wait for it to sell, it will be worth closer to what it shows.