I understand that perspective of rewarding them with other people's money, but bitcoin rewards miners with investors' money as new bitcoin is created. I see steemit doing the same thing by rewarding those who create the content which give the social media ecosystem value. Other cryptocoins are investments only whereas this one includes author rewards. As long as the price is going up, it works well for everyone. Whenever the price just goes down and investors can't get out, it does seem fraudulent.