Serious question: who is putting money into Steem?

For every sale of Steem receiving BTC or Cash, there has to be a willing buyer. Who are these people? Why are they buying Steem?

I have spent some time researching who / why people would want Steem (full disclosure: I'm trying to figure out where the value comes from) and everyone rants about investing and potential future use for transactions... But who's buying it now?? There is like $10k per day distributed.. who's on the other side of that?

Sorry maybe I'm still missing something