Actually seeking a non-financial ROI is not such a crazy idea on STEEM since the value of networking and collaborating with like minds is hard to quantify but definitely has value.
I admit the inflationary properties of STEEM did make me wonder if the price might gradually erode and that's one reason why it might buck the trend of high speculative excess as we're seeing in other crypto assets. Now that I understand it though I can see the bulk of the inflationary pressure is borne primarily on the liquid STEEM. All those people holding liquid STEEM on exchanges or slushing around traders accounts are effectively transferring wealth to the reward pool. It's a brilliant design that rewards long term vesting.
Thank you for your most interesting comment and apologies for my late reply. Only today did I learn (I am a Newbie) where to go to keep track of replies. I guess I got lazy from all my forum services which arrange to have an email messages sent to you when there are replies.
I feel that we should expect the long-term slope of the price on STEEM to turn upward only when the volumes of recurrent demand in the marketplace exceed the volumes of new supply being brought for sale as a result of the token creation and payment system.
If you look at the price curve on STEEM and ignore the hysteria/euphoria that affected many coins early in the summer you'll see what I feel is the long-term trend line, So investors here need to look for other than financial capital gain for their ROI.
This remark and your opening comment bring up a big and important subject. How should we conceptualize value? To make sense of our lives, value should not be seen as being equivalent to purchasing power, let alone some quantity of money paid for item X? Network value, e.g., is much broader than it is normally presented to be in the cryptocurrency literature (I cover this near the first half of my video at . And then there is the huge topic of delivering value via unpaid services and how that can be remunerated in ways that go beyond purchasing power via fiat money (please see my article here http://marketstatsanalytics.com/valuingcryptos.html .)
I feel that these matters have notable implications for the way that we recognize value and justify parking fiat at money in Steem Power indefinitely.
Cheers!