Agreed, and that's almost precisely how I see them... and I doubt I would have even written this post if they had originally just been presented as a *fun diversion."

I think it was the whole two-year lead in with the "This is the FUTURE of Steem, and will save everything and send Steem to the Moon!" sales pitch that made me scratch my head. When Ned first floated this idea I thought to myself "Dream on, bud... maybe 1/100th of 1% of web influencers are actually influential enough to make these anything other than Monopoly money."

If the current trend is anything to go by, most people get a handful of some token and think "oooh... handout!" and then promptly dump them to make 13 cents, and that's the sum-total of their interest...

But time will tell! I have almost always ended up in the Devil's Advocate seat... and I am totally happy to be proven wrong!