I really love your train of thought here and in various interviews I’ve heard you speak in. I think most people are far too causal about the elephant room... token price. I totally agree that if continue to get trolled by this low token price it will be difficult to attract investment here whether that by time or capital.
Wouldn’t it be great if there were some sort of gamification for STEEM like DEC or some sort of buyback or burn program on a material level?
Yes...I didn't explicitly come out and say it in the post, but token price is everything. High and increasing prices brings more users, more developers, more apps, and even free marketing and promotion.
The huge and disproportionate price drop STEEM went through over the past year did serve as a much needed wake up call to both Steemit, Inc and the Steem community, but now it's time to do whatever we can to get that price going up and start the virtuous cycle it creates.
I want to tell you this because you are focused so much on the price.
I am a technical analyst and I have analyzed hundreds of stocks, indices and crypto projects simply based on their chart patterns. In Stocks and in Cryptos you will often find that when they launch, a corrective pattern (small or big) is formed FIRST to shake out the non-believers before the first rally starts.
What I am trying to tell you here is that 8$ Steem was not part of an impulse wave, but still part of this corrective pattern (in hindsight we can be very sure about that).
This corrective pattern seems to come to an end soon. What this means is, that we have no idea where the first impulse wave will lead us. It could easily blow up to 10$ in a straight line, then after corrections 20,30,50$...
All I am asking for is for a little hype for Steem, once this wave up starts. Until then, we have still time to prepare. If there is no hype involved, the first impulse may end up at 3-5$, which would still be decent but way below the potential for Steem.
TA doesn't even consider underlying business. Capital gains is the traditional incentive for investing, but Steem allows ~90% of the value of the business to be extracted by profiteers through rewards. This business is content creation, and that is what markets Steem as well, by attracting a market via that content and enabling new investors to buy Steem, creating capital gains.
Consider that 
Common sense does.
I think some of the price drop is because the conversion of SBD printed when the prices where high. This has exceeded by far the inflation that steem is supposed to have.
At some point we should consider if we really need SBD with all the bad effects that could happen when the price drops.
RE: HF21 and the Steem Vision