What is the fundamental source of income that gives steem value?

[I assume it is possible to ask a question and have a conversation in the comments section instead of posting comments.... like you would in a forum]

The following applies to a scenario without any inflation: Bitshares (BTS tokens) have value because there is demand for them to pay transaction and market fees on the Bitshares exchange. Also BTS have value because they are well suited to be used as security to back BitAssets/Smartcoins.

My question is: What gives Steem it's fundamental value - "fundamental" here means you need to discount the effect of inflation and speculation (market cap increase).

Steem has value because people are willing to buy it. Here are some reasons why people buy steem:

People simply wish to support Steem, the Steemit platform or the authors, the way to do that is to buy steem.
Power-hungry people buying Steem Power to get a bigger sway on what's visible and what's not, who earns money etc, and more popularity. (I've bought some steem - what a wonderful thing, I can press the upvote button on my own comment and it's the TOP comment! Whoha!)
People buying in. believing steem will grow to the moon. (This is not sustainable - if this is the biggest reason people buy steem, then it will only grow into a bubble and collapse). (Plus, of course, steem is a very bad investment objective due to it's hyperinflationary nature. I think many people don't realize that and are hence wasting their money on buying steem).
Altcoin traders buying steem, hoping to do a profit by predicting the price going up through "technical analysis".
Many believe in further price growth because the SteemIt platform still has a lot of growth and adoption potential.
Some people believe in long term price growth because the Steem token and Steem blockchain has a much bigger potential than what's visible in the current SteemIt platform.

Taking away market share, from other social media sites.

That doesn't answer the question of where the demand for Steem comes from. The other social media sites get their income from an advertisement service that is paid for by external parties (e.g. a coca cola spot you have to watch before watching the actual video on youtube). Steem doesn't have this kind of income.

Well the more screen time people spend on here. The more advertisers will be willing to pay to reach them.

possibly investors?

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What is the fundamental source of income that gives steem value?

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