In the voting bot days of steem, the trending page was a wasteland of bot-boosted posts, whales at war with each other (or everyone) and large stakeholders trading votes on whatever their thought of the day was.

Where did it get them? It got them a whole lot of extra steem that plummeted in value.

I spent a few hours a couple days ago browsing the early posting history of the steem founders and early whales, observing some of the hateful rhetoric and self-voting and generally distasteful behaviors. It almost felt like Twitter. (I event left a comment, to a post from like 4 years ago -- doubtful the OP is even still around, maybe doesn't even know where his private keys are, anymore. Kinda felt like I was wandering around somewhere in the realm of Ghostbusters ... ).

No doubt Hive has come a long way since those early days.

Getting less of a token that grows in value may be a better investment strategy. How do we grow value?

You have nailed it here. The growth needs to be in value (not just token price). We need to follow LeoFinance's example. A skyrocketing market price with no development to the front-end and no liquidity could lead to a scaleability problem, followed by a dump, leading to a price crash, followed by a mass exodus, leaving an ash heap behind.

Remember, the token itself is just a collection of bits in the ether -- value is derived from utility, which means satisfying the subjective needs, wants, and desires of the 'consumers' (which, in this case, is all of us, plus newcomers, plus eventually would-be external investors).