OK leaving aside all the confirmation biases this post is inevitably catering towards I think you make some good points. Ultimately I think what is so cool about steemit is, as you mentioned, the fact that you don't interact with the blockchain side of things and the UI is completely seamless. It's amazing to someone who is a blockchain fanatic that we are finally seeing the commercialized mass appeal apps like steemit. Also, a model that will hopefully optimize for great content and a fair reward system is pretty cool too ;)

One other note is that actually the value of bitcoin and essentially all speculative investments come from the perceived use rates at some discounted future time. The current steemit price reflects how the market believes steemit will grow in the future discounted on the basis of net present value, not on the current use rates.