Not sure I follow your reasoning here.
If there was no token at all then this platfrom would be no different from a thousand others which exist already, like Medium or Quora or Blogspot. There would be no point, it could as well fold. Otherwise the operators would need to invent a business model and aside from subscriptions (Medium), ads (Quora) or cross-subsidies (Blogspot), no one has been able to come up with anything .... until the blockchain and the token came along ...
If the platform was to distribute BTC that BTC would have to come from somewhere ... where would it come from ? Who and why would provide a continuous stream of BTC to sponsor the participants on a no-own-token platform?
On the contrary, I am convinced these tokens, steem and hive, are "the real deal", the real advanced cryptocurrencies which can facilitate and support new economic activity which would otherwise not take place