Steem is highly inflationary, SP isn't. Deliberately so. Investors have got to be willing to wait a few years to allow an entity like this to develop and grow before pulling the plug/ dumping. Investors unwilling to do this are not investors they are speculators.

SP rewards investors that are active participants in the growth of the platform. It also makes authors, commentators and curators stakeholders in the enterprise.

I agree with you that SBD has the potential to becomes a ubiquitous currency, to me this is yet another string to the bow, not the only one.

Onboarding of institutional investors (ad agencies/ media companies) is possible as is moving to some (optional) ad based model.

The monetisation opportunities are vast, however the priority should be user adoption and gaining critical mass. From this, all things are possible.