Authored by Emiliano S. Pagnotta and Andrea Buraschi from Imperial College London, I found a mention of Steem in between the pages. Actually, two - the other being being Steemit. That's twice as much as mention of anything else, except for Bitcoin. I'll take that double combo lol. Check it out here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3142022
I don't even know if the paper has any weight, but it looks serious and probably worth paying attention to. Maybe not. Maybe it's just full of fluff. My only activity in the blockchain space these days is waiting for Steem's communities, Smart Media Tokens, EOS's launch, and Tauchain's Alpha release. Can't be bothered about anything else at this point really. Anyway, Steem's at page 5 of the research paper as an example of being in demand because it's censorship resistant. Not the full picture, but fair enough. Can't say the same about bank accounts and traditional media platforms.
The rest of the paper seems to go into game-theoretical studies, economic models, and such. Overall, I just tend to see potential capital flow into decentralised platforms for virtue of being accessible alternatives to the existing powerful centralised systems. Too lazy to think too much about it, but Steem is what people are using actively already, so I think it's relatively safer compared to most cryptocurrencies. I've already hedged this position with EOS and diversified into other assets anyway so there's a certain peace of mind.
On the other hand, Tauchain Agoras is still a work-in-progress, but I now already have expectations for it to turn out to be one of the best inventions ever, hence my confidence in its future. Nope, the research paper doesn't even mention this project at all. It's flying under everybody's radar! *evil grin*. But that's the nature of the hard-to-understand concepts underlying Tau I guess. Or.. maybe I'm just crazy :)