That might be the case....Reading the white paper it looks like I was reading the SMT white paper...talking about the same things.
And I dont understand, if it was an SMT why they would allocate a percentage of the tokens to STEEM holders.....would that be necessary for an SMT?
It is very perplexing how the white paper kept mentioning their blockchain....is it over the top of this one?
After reading some more, I'm not at all sure what's going on, but see my reply to @bryan-imhoff. Block 18,500 was in March 2016. They're only paying the earliest of early Steem adopters.