Don't forget when BTC first started, local commodities [sillk roaed] are already participating, in a way to try out this easy transition that saves a lot of money.

In order to buy and sell items IRL you must have some sort of private chat feature.

Also, vendors will inevitably dump (liquidate) their STEEM on the open market, (when selling their wares) further driving down the valuation relative to fiat.

The current major use-case for STEEM (value) is ADVERTISING.

However, it looks like the banner ads are denominated in $USD.

https://staticfiles.steemit.com/SteemitMediaKit.pdf

The big G and the big F make zillions of dollars on advertising. If STEEMIT could get just a small slice of that juicy ad money converted to STEEM, it would do wonders for the MARKET CAP.

If a major advertiser wants to drop millions of dollars of ads on STEEMIT, their best option at the moment, is to buy banner ads (which do absolutely nothing for the price of STEEM).

Also, wouldn't it be nice to be able to upvote ads that you like and get curation rewards? It seems like the "promoted" feature should be the gateway to the banner ads. The top trending "promoted" posts should rotate in the various banner ad positions.

And, you should be able to pay for "promoted" status with STEEM and not just SBD!