The value of STEEM is closely tied to the success of the Steemit platform. While there have been questions about the legitimacy of the Steemit platform with some critical users referring to it as a Ponzi scheme, Steemit has managed to onboard over half a million users since its launch in 2016, which shows the potential that Steemit has as an incentivized social media network. Furthermore, Block’tivity indicates that Steem’s blockchain has the highest activity score, with more transactions than Bitcoin and Ethereum combined.
If Steemit manages to keep its leadership position as the go-to get-paid-to-post content creation platform and manages to establish itself as a reputable global social media network, then STEEM tokens will most likely be worth a multiple of where they are trading now.
Having said that, social networking is a very competitive market with well-funded players, such as Facebook, which could easily change their business model to also reward their user bases for interacting with their platform. At this point, it would be tough for Steemit to compete and the value of its digital token would eventually decline.