Okay, I gave you a 100% upvote, so enjoy that .01 SBD.

Now, this was in many ways a brilliant post. There's a lot to parse. A lot to take issue with, but a lot to agree with. That's what a great piece of content does. It makes people think, feel, and possibly both at the same time. Then act. In this case, blow two cents up your ass.

First off, the premise of Steemit is flawed. The whole idea of "quality" is subjective. There's no such thing as objective quality when it comes to content (or much of anything else, really). Try reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and you'll begin to get an idea of what I mean. The very idea of quality is such that everyone with half a brain cell is qualified to judge what it is. Few people are good at judging and all of us who are use flawed criteria or prejudicial ones (there's a reason that confirmation bias is a thing). So any system designed to rise or fall on the basis of quality has doomed itself from the get-go.

I'm certainly not an expert on derivatives, or financial markets for that matter, so I can neither confirm nor refute your argument on that. What I will say is value is an agreed-upon state of awareness regarding anything that might be tradeable. At one time, before fiat, people traded what they owned. Fur coats, or pelts, in colder climates were of high value because they provided a useful purpose. In warmer climates, they were of lesser value. But if you lived in Africa and was good at hunting and killing animals that could be used for making fur coats or pelts, then you could make a living if you could find someone who wanted what you had and who had something else you wanted. Many cryptocurrencies are based on this kind of value. Many more aren't, as you so aptly noted.

I was around when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. I was active on the Internet, but I wasn't involved in any type of commerce. Many people were. When the dot-com bubble burst, I started researching why. Quite simply, irrational exuberance took over. People got emotional about a new technology that was going to change how people communicate, do business, etc. It did. But not until a lot of failed experiments hit the dirt. Many of those failed because investors put money into bad business plans and bad business managers. But there were people making money online. Amazon opened its doors in 1994. They didn't become profitable for 10 years, but that reality was built into the business plan. Jeff Bezos is a genius. And all he sold for the longest time was books.

When it comes to cryptocurrencies, there are different kinds of "currencies." Some are coins, some are tokens. Among tokens, you have security tokens, utility tokens, staking tokens, and probably a few more categories I'm leaving out. They all have a different purpose. But few of these will survive if, as you say, Market Makers, don't support them. In some cases, those are banks and financial institutions. In other cases, governments. In other cases, it could be a market. Gaming tokens, for instance, don't need government or banks to survive if the gamers who buy, sell, and trade them agree on the value within the gaming system wherein they interact. So, while you hit the nail on the head in some respects, there is a lot of complexity regarding crypto markets that go beyond these arguments. Nevertheless, you have proffered a valiant effort, and I lift my sword (point it toward the sun).