I have no idea TBH - I only bought some 'cos a guy at work recommended them. I have no idea what makes them unique. just try not to think about it 'what ifs', and there's a couple of cents to start your compensation fund!
I think steem is the place to be - at least you can do something with the currency! I'm gonna try and get more involved in the collective education/ curation side of it via discord - one of my little new years projects.
That's cool, I really like STEEM because of what you mentioned but also because it doesn't have to go up to make money if you put in some effort. Although I think with well over 400k accounts they should be trying to get paid advertising that could be inserted in a side bar or as ads every 20 posts or something and the advertising would of course be paid in STEEM or SBD and could be burned just like the current ad section which is dysfunctional. They could even automate the USD to STEEM conversion so advertisers wouldn't need to know anything about crypto.