Steem, the currency, is a bad investment. What are you investing in? You don't need to buy any to use the platform and earn. The only reasons to buy it is for self-voting, vote buying, and speculating. So, leverage and speculation.

The steem power 'interest rate' is worthless as a tool to fight against inflation and the tide of early adopters and post miners cashing out, and anybody who spends any time here has surmised that, thus the tsunami of vote gaming fuckery and lack of actual investment.

Right now, we've got Ned popping out every now and again to pump the price on his media tours, presumably when he needs to cash out a little for a boat payment or whatever.

There are two thing that are supposed to save us, SMT's and something Dan alluded to, advertisers. Advertisers can buy steem, advertise on the platform using vote buying schemes, and get paid instead of paying to advertise. Great. The trending page turns from individual asshole opportunists into corporate opportunists. The only semi-legitimate hope, SMT's, is...where the fuck are they? If they ever show up and steem can have a use case besides a transfer of wealth from investors to post miners, we may be able to get somewhere.

Also, you could twist someone's arm into only accepting steem for some service, like hosting Dtube videos.

Full Disclosure: way under water on the $5 steem I bought to 'support the team'