If we add on useful features that contribute to reducing inflation via Steem burning, we'd relieve that selling pressure even more.
The problem I'm seeing is that the price of Steem is not clearly represented in fiat money value and, unfortunately, we still rely on fiat to live. With that said, how can we cope with the inflation/depreciation of an asset that is printed and distributed in a daily basis. I'll try to explain myself.
From the protocol point of view, at least for me, Steem is one of the best blockchains out there, with proven real use cases (projects running on it) and an imense potential for developers to create on.
From the invertor's point of view there is the potential to stash and collect dividends from it, either by curating or delegating. However, is it worth the risk/reward? The risk exposure is huge to put on fiat, and keep it locked for 12 weeks, in case the markets go down badly. That can be seen on the huge amounts of Steem being held in exchanges and not in SP.
So, now we can go back to my first paragraph, when it comes to having a link between Steem and fiat money. I believe the biggest representative of the Steem chain is Steemit Inc., but even themselves have been dumping Steem simply because they don't have an input (as far as I know, apart from the adsense). Many other project out there rely on Steem to pay the bills. And many user also milk it to pay the bills. The selling pressure comes from all ends.
Steem needs input in fiat money to be sustainable and the projects running on it also need that, there's no output without input, or else it's just printing money. Burning and incentivise powering up are valid ways. I don't see the input coming from external investors, as it's too risky for the reward, there needs to be another benefit.
Creation of SMTs? Totaly valid, but those SMTs also need some sort of input in fiat money, or else it just transfers the problem to them.
So how can we solve the paradox and the conflict of interest we are currently in?