And if social rewards are moved to the second layer, inflation is reduced by half, and protocols that affect staked interest are implemented (such as how powering down affects vote weight), then this further reduces the selling pressures.
With 100x volatility within a four-year BTC cycle inflation doesn't mean shit.
Hive as a content creation platform hasn't taken off because the development in the last four years has heavily focused on back end issues including scalability. The UX still sucks. Only in very recent times have I seen any real improvements in that department. And now you and a few other people want to kill the content rewards at the base layer. Hive Engine tokens are worthless because they have near zero speculative value. SMTs will remain worthless for a long time when they're eventually released.