Never underestimate the power (and staying power) of what I'd call "The Indifferent Middle."
Observation number 1: I have an inclination to think that those traders who occasionally "churn" huge volumes on Upbit have neither Steem nor Hive accounts, and care only for bots and charts... and they'd be trading tacos if they could make a profit that way. They likely only have exchange accounts, and know nothing of these ecosystems. They do the exact same thing with other cryptos, but we're not aware of it because it's not in our wheelhouse. Just a couple of days ago some coin I've never heard of shot up on 15x normal volume; then shrank back to where it were before. Where did that come from? Upbit.
My guess is that what will slowly kill Steem/Steemit is the complete lack of development... they will just end up being left behind as a hapless 1990's message board clone on a blockchain while the rest of the world progresses. $0.18 this year, $0.15 next year, $0.12 the year after, $0.10 the year after, etc, etc. Just a guess, though. A handful of sharks will keep pulling whatever they can by delegating huge sums to various upvote services and they will become the de-facto centralized "owners." Again, just a guess.
All of Justin's Steem "left the building" after the Bittrex settlement and is either in a Binance exchange account, or has been gradually liquidated over time. So perhaps Justin has also "left the building," through the back door exit. The current top-20 witnesses don't look like his sock puppet accounts...
I some ironic way, I guess it all serves as an object lesson that the world often does not turn out in the way that would "make sense." Numbered days, indeed... but that could mean 10 days, or 5000 days...