I have seen people asking questions like "Why should I invest $500 in STEEM when I see people making $5000 on a post", and the simple answer to that is: Interest Rates
If you put together both the 90% interest rate on STEEM Power, and the 104 Week Withdraw Period, what you get is a never ending flow of growth. For example, say you have 10,000 STEEM Power (Equal to about $30,000) and you decide you want to cash that STEEM Power out over the next 2 years (STEEM Dollars can be cashed out instantly, STEEM Power takes 104 Weeks/2 Years, and your rewards for posting are paid half in STEEM Power, half in STEEM Dollars). $30,000 over 104 Weeks is a little over $288 a Week. Which is not bad for extra income coming from a Social Media website. But if you put together the 90% (per year) Interest Rate with the 104 Week Period, you actually end up with more money at the end of year 1 than you had in the wallet previously. Each 7 day period accrues 7 days (1 week) of interest, but the 104 Week Power Down takes 1/2 of that each Week. Which means you keep all the money you have in your wallet, and the Power Down is basically taking 1/2 of your interest rate and paying it out to you Weekly. Which means at the end of year 2, you actually have 2x the amount in your wallet as when you started the Power Down.
So for example, if you had 10,000 STEEM Power worth $30,000, and you Power Down over 2 Years. At the end of 2 Years, you actually have 20,000 STEEM Power worth $60,000, and can Power Down again and get 2x as much as you did the previous 2 Years. And if you continue contributing Content that entire time, you will probably have way more. And STEEM could actually still rise in value. STEEM shot up over $3 over the 7 days following the July 4th Launch. Then, someone found a bunch of people's passwords online through another website that had Passwords stolen, or some other source, and took $85,000 from people's wallets (all returned by Steemit). And there was a DDoS attack that had the Website down for hours and hours, and once it was back up no one could access their wallets until the internal investigation was complete. After all that, STEEM stayed steady at $3, meaning it probably isn't going to ever drop lower than about $2.50, and has the potential to rise to $10 each or $20 each with Growth of the Community, and Advancements within the Community.
It's still summer. There are people on Vacation, and taking care of the Kids while they are out of School, etc. When Summer is over, a lot of parents are going to be on Social Media a lot more, and people will be coming to STEEM and Steemit. Then when Christmas comes, tons of College Students, etc, are going to be buying STEEM with their Christmas money, and people are going to be getting STEEM or Bitcoins (to use to buy STEEM) for their Friends who talk about Steemit all the time. Entire countries go crazy over Christmas, over the next 4 months America is about to go Christmas crazy, and STEEM is going to be more sought after than it is now.
STEEM still has various Landmark Achievements to reach that will raise it's value:
1. Steemit Payout Launch (DONE)
2. Get listed on Multiple Exchanges (DONE)
3. Get accepted as Payment by Bitcoin based Websites
4. Get mentioned on TV by the News
5. Reach 100,000 Users
6. Reach 1,000,000 Users
7. First Steemit TV Commercial
8. First Large Gold Retailer to Accept STEEM
9. First Person to Buy a Car with STEEM
10. First Person to Buy a House with STEEM
11. First Major Tech Company to Accept STEEM as Payment
12. First Famous Billionaire to Invest in STEEM
13. Overtaking Another Social Media Site in Popularity
14. Steemit being Listed on a Major Stock Exchange
15. First STEEM ATM
16. First STEEM Debit Card
17. First Government to Regulate STEEM, therefor Completely Legitimazing it
None of these things have been done yet, and when they happen STEEM will go up in value each time. The Pool of people that will Buy STEEM and use Steemit has hardly even been tapped.