I claim that the incentive is just not there for content consumers
Top-down is viable. Content producers can reward engagement with $0.02+ upvotes. Combined with ease of spending, this can be very attractive. I.e. gamers + gaming blog + dgameland. Producers also get 25% back through curation rewards. This is just an example.
Honestly, I don't think STEEM will ever be worth this much. The only time this happened was because of a pump & dump manipulation exploit abused by a whale that thas since been fixed.
Well, I definitely believe STEEM is going to be worth a lot. The only danger is something else will come to rival it, like Facebook did with MySpace. Otherwise, I think Steem will eventually hit $500-$1000. Big numbers, I know, but all we need for that to happen is the wordpress community to embrace it. 5,000,000+ downloads of Steempress and then big corporations will embrace it, a Steem ad market will grow and the whole thing will explode.
What sold me on Steem was its SEO value. I realized its poised for rapid growth on the web. I believe in Ethereum's Web 3, but its going to take time and be a struggle to transfer the whole web over to Ethereum's blockchain, and I bet some of the web will never convert. But Steem on the other hand, it can easily spread throughout the web like a fire.
I can't agree with you. If it is ever worth this much, everyone's existing steem power will also upvote for a lot. They're going to sell and the price is going to drop back down. I believe STEEM will become somewhat stable, and that it won't ever go past $1 for long.