@dan thought that Steem would be at least a 20 year project to accomplish the sort of libertarian goals he talked about. All of what we are seeing now is a work in progress that will either evolve toward being more useful or at some point will die, but critiquing it in its present form as if it is supposed to be "finished" makes about as much sense as critiquing Notre-Dame a few years after construction started.

Meanwhile the environment in which we operate today is highly speculation-driven. It would be unrealistic to deny that, and self destructive to not exploit it when the opportunity presents, even if we're trying to build something that is useful for more than speculation.