This is what I've been trying to figure out - What can WE do, as a community, to increase the value of Steem? If that value is defined by the value of Steemit, then our focus should be on increasing the value - or even just the "perceived" value - of Steemit.
Perhaps investments could come by allowing members here to sell their items (art, photographs, etc..), and their services (writing, tech services, etc..,) - and by "allowing" I mean the community not downvoting sales posts (selling with overall community blessings).
If enough members sell here, and drive traffic to those sales posts and start making sales (primarily to buyers comfortable with using Bitcoin, as that is what they would be using to buy Steem to make the purchase), would that increase the value of Steem?
So then we could start creating posts with "Selling" as the category tag.
And reputation, verification would become more important as well.
There's already PeerHub, accepting sale of services and products, and that's in Steem and not Bitcoin, which should theoretically (but not really, as I've explained in my article) keep the price of Steem up (as we wouldn't need to sell Steem for Bitcoin, in order to obtain said products and services).
The truth is that the underlying mechanism of Steemit is flawed and this is something that the founders, @dan and @ned, need to change. Money printing should be reduced significantly or even stopped. The actual value of Steemit should be confirmed by recognizable business agencies or through offers of known social network competitors. This will bring investor and cryptocurrency trader confidency back.
I've thought of one thing to drive the price of Steem up, but it's it more of a joke - invite dissidents or whistleblowers. If governments want to silence them up, they can buy Steem to become whales and downvote their posts. In fact, it's quite possible that with enough money, they can wreak censorship havoc to the entire network, downvoting everyone's posts.
(i was thinking advertisement plugs to promote posts could be paid for by outside currency.)
though an alternate currency would be nice to exist on its own without need to track any other one(s).
so then sale of goods in exchange for steem bucks would allow people who want to promote their content to do so using the bucks paid while not having to bring in any fiat paper money to the system nor ask users to acquire that currency to buy what they like.
a seller just brings his goods or services for trade,
in exchange for steem he spends to promote his goods or services available for trade for other goods or services being traded in the market or bought with whatever currency is used to negotiate the transaction. (currency is just a ledger system, dollars are only needed for paying government taxes, [digressive point to following up on the topic of paying dues, a service people could provide in exchange for officially produced steem {my ignorance about where steem comes from} is to provide cpu cycles like SETI@home or to do file organization or tag pruning {unless that is already automated} or they can collect fuel to deliver energy to the steem server farm or lay fiber or mirror the site to help absorb bandwidth costs in exchange for steem reimbursement to get them SEO preference by having promoted their fiber laying or energy producing company's logo and deals on the site. ie "today's steemit crypto-social networking service is brought to you by alan and sons wood gas supplies™ they're helping to Make America enerGy independent Again and are ready for your business. now accepting steem, bitcoin, doge coin, silver coin, gold coin and carrot coins by the pound as payment choices." and if the service was a membership dues charging site, like a members only trading post, albeit with publicly visible ads, then steem could be bought back by the system as it recycles itself. posts could cost money even grammar mistakes, refusal to use capitalization or obvious violations of decent use codes against profanity or grievous misrepresentation of fellow members can be fined in steem so that either such posts get removed and a waiting period elapses or they have to get enough upvotes to pay the fine before more posts can be made from the posting account.])