You've raised good points. Let me add to the discussion.

What's fundamentally missing? I believe the main reason why STEEM failed to maintain market value is this:

Not catering to the demand side of the equation.

Without utility that has real world use-value, there aren't enough strong reasons for anyone to buy STEEM apart from speculation, as I explained in this post.

I am working on a feature that could be added to Hivemind Communities called Native Ads, which I believe is just one step toward creating utility value for STEEM/SMTs. I would love to hear your thoughts on it.