RE: Question: Why will people buy STEEM?
I think this question is still a bit hard to answer, but it's an important discussion to have.
As I see it, there are currently two main reasons to buy STEEM:
- Increase one's influence
- Price speculation
Increase of influence
Buying STEEM lets you convert them to STEEM Power, which will increase your voting power in the STEEM ecosystem. Having voting power is very beneficial, as it enables you to gain more STEEM or STMD (Steem dollars) from curating content. In a way it's a virtuous cycle, as having more STEEM can give you more STEEM Power which enables you to earn more STEEM, rinse and repeat.
Price speculation
We've just seen the end of initial mining phase, so from now on liquid STEEM will become more scarce as witness rewards are paid out only as STEEM Power which means it can only be made liquid in equal weekly payments over two years. Furthermore, STEEM is still in alpha/beta mode, with no publicity beyond the Bitcointalk ANN. As the system matures, demand for STEEM should increase.
That's what I have been thinking too. However, speculation in itself is not a reason to buy anything, if there isn't some other factor to set a value in the first place. It's kind of a secondary reason - not sufficient in itself. That would leave influence as the primary factor in establishing any value, while speculation will push air into the bubble.
This is more like a bubble than bitshares, isn't it? In bitshares you must own BTS to make use of the platform, which gives BTS an intrinsic value. STEEM lacks this.
Now if I really think about it, I might indeed be tempted to get a few dollars worth of STMP just for the sake of downvoting potential BS and rewarding good stuff. And that actually gives STEEM some intrinsic value. That's funny. I never thought I would want any influence, let alone pay money for it. Maybe there are lots of others too who don't initially realize they want to exchange money for influence.
Now, suddenly, the business idea of steem starts to make sense. Actually, it might be brilliant!