I've thought it would be pretty cool instead of if going by dollar value the trending page went on quantity up votes. However, what if it also took them from different tags intentionally? So instead of taking them all from crypto-currency and steemit related tags, perhaps have the top one from those, and the top from travel, food, etc. Can still use the highest number of votes and just pick through the tags based upon that. That should result in a very varied landing page.
The hot page shows content in order of the number of votes instead of monetary value. But it does have a problem with spam votes.
As for your other idea I'm pretty sure Google news does this and that would work brilliantly here!! Have you done a post on that idea?
No but I might go ahead and do that. I needed something to post about today.
I went and wrote a Post explaining my thoughts. Feel free to challenge it, destroy it, add to it, or run with it.