The coin is far from worthless - the way Steem's blockchain is structured (DPOS) makes liquid steem constantly disappear from the market, since a vast majority of users that actually generate a significant amount of steem invest in their account - freezing their Steem in the process (effectively removing the coins from the market).

Also, I don't think I need to mention the fact that Steem is not a coin for trading (even though it has 3 sec transactions and literally 0 transaction fees thanks, again, to DPOS), so the big initial inflation that will slow down by a big margin every year is potentially good for the coin.