I love when BTC ratio is brought up, because it really doesn't say anything, as you mention. I would however dispute your claim that BTC is functioning as the gold of your story. The platform does not guarantee any BTC backing at all, nor does it print in accordance to a reserve amount of BTC. The fact that people trade to BTC as the backup/hedge is a slightly different matter. Comparing steem price against BTC I daresay is like comparing gold price to steem price: just as irrelevant, and just as likely to be the commodity of choice for hedging (looking macroscopically at general investment).

However, that's really just a distraction from your main point about currency valuation. The economic model for currencies is generally understood in terms of value exchange. You have the more abstract "Social-HUB" value, and you have the better understood "goods and services" value. The latter is here but sparse (steem monsters, what what), though it seems more and more seem to be popping up all the time. The former is hard to put any number on, and at the very least we already know that engagement sells from an advertising perspective.

By the way, I'm not worried about people selling on the exchange, so long as after all the shuffling there is still a wide distribution of the token. Even though let's say a/many small stake users may be continuously draining funds, they are still part of this value exchange ecosystem, and the hope here from the point of propping up the value of the token is that one day they decide to save more of it. Note that plenty of people (even these folks) are incentived to hold a good amount of value in the form of SP already. A good indicator of health in my opinion would be to see the number is distinct people (remove alts) holding some level of reserve in the accounts, and the amounts saved. And imagine how silly they would feel if it blew up and they start lamenting why they didn't bother saving more? (Still... Not a given that this happens, mind you, but I'm optimistic)

And this isn't even talking about SMT , which I think you got down pretty well.