Leveraging your assets , yes.
The steem rewards pool are not your assets to leverage.

Networking, yes.
Based on free exchange. (time, labor, contacts etc). This is based on an exchange of property, or potential profit.
The steem rewards pool is no ones property.

Financial incentives , yes.
In the real world financial incentives are offered by one person with the finance, to incentivize someone to work for them, with reward.
But a person 'a' offering to pay person 'b' with something that is not theirs to give...?

Humans don't become something new when they buy some crypto.

Maybe it's certain personality type of human that buys crypto....
Financial speculators have much higher than average number of sociopaths and malignant narcissist types in their numbers....
(lack of ethical restriction)
Crypto offers this even more so than traditional financial markets..