You could be buying steem to power up your account to be able to give a better vote. This really means you have to lock your steem into steem power for 3 months to get it all back and that you're putting a stake in the platform. There are also places where you can use steem to buy things like PeerHub. I'm sure, given some time, there will be more places taking steem as payment because there is no transaction fee and its near instant transaction time.
I also think that the only reason of any money/currency is to sell it. You may sell your steem for bitcoin, your bitcoin for fiat, and your fiat for food. Then that person that sold the food for fiat might sell that for bitcoin, and sell the bitcoin for steem. It's all a cycle.
Yes, I don't think there is a cap on the amount of steem that can be created but it's limited each day. There is a pool that is divided up among all the votes. So if many people vote, the amount of money they give per vote is less than if only a few people vote.
nevertheless, Steemit is trying to create money out of nothing and pay its users with a superfluous currency that has no intrinsic value
Ummm... I think you could replace 'Steemit' with [any western country] and your statement would be a little more accurate. Where do you think fiat currency gets its value?
fiat currency originally got its value from the government purchasing silver and storing it in the treasury. They got rid of that and the economy is now worse.
Besides that, have you ever gone to a remedial history class? Whenever someone even mentions the national debt the first words out of someones mouth are "cant they just print more money?" Well, can they. Because thats what steemit is trying to do
Yes, fiat currency used to be backed by gold and silver until 1974 (in Canada). The year is similar for the US; '68 maybe. Yes things have gotten out of control not because the government is printing too much money, it's because the government is borrowing the money from banks and has to pay it back with interest.
If you have the only $10 and you lend me $1 if I agree to pay you back $2, where does the second dollar come from? I would have to borrow it from you and then I'd owe $4. I would never be able to pay you back. That is how the bank controls the government now. It has nothing to do with how much money they print. I don't know a lot about US history, but in Canada before 1974, the government spent large sums of money on 2 world wars, major highways, major airports, railway systems, sea ports, the St-Lawrence seaway to the great lakes, etc. All of those things did not even make a dent in the countries debt until they got rid of the gold backed dollar.
So, it's not because the government is printing money. they were always doing that. It's because the government gave the power to print money to the banks and they are ruining the economy because now everyone is enslaved by debt.
This is not the case with steemit. Steemit has a fixed amount of steem being created every day. The value that backs it is the people using the site and how much value they get out of it. Yes, if people stopped using the site and steemit continued to create steem, then the value would drop. But, if people keep joining and they keep finding value in this place, then the value will go up. I'm sure there are factors that cause deflation of steem as well. Like holding steem power. All that steem power everyone has is locked up for a short term so only the liquid steem can be sold. If everyone started to power down all at once, I'm sure the price would drop even before they sold it. But not everyone is powering down so the price is holding steady.