Blockchains which do not generate revenue cannot profit. Are Steem tokens being burned or generated? Are there any supply sinks? Do you see anything which would lead a reasonable person to believe that the supply of Steem will decrease?
They backtracked on the 2 year lockup and that was the beginning of the end. After that happened, then everyone else started to follow the lead of the hard forks which kept changing the economics in favor of the short term speculator, the whales who wanted to dump as fast as possible, etc.