Why Steem struggles to compete with other crypto currencys?

Im using this site for a few weeks and have been hugely impressed with the the quality of content on here. Ive found alot of very useful information on crypto currencies and alot of interesting articles about a wide range of topics from economics and politics to travel and leisure. The concept of this site is brilliant whereby authors and people who contribute are rewarded financially. Its unique in the sense that all users have shares in it and its completely upto the users to decide whats important and deserving of attention. Its a great platform for innovative and creative people to share their material . Everyday I learn something new off it. For the first time in my life ive wrote articles to share with the public, which i find enjoyable and i get great satisfaction out of other people appreciating them. Steemit is filled with many great qualities and to me it would appear destined to bask. With steem being the only crypto currency im aware of thats backed by this model of a platform i thought the whole essence of having its own community should help drive the currency upwards. Alot of people have an invested interest and they're interacting with so many others in the same postion.
I personally invested just a small token figure when joining. I was fascinated by this new revolution. My reasons for joining origanally was to use it as a further source of information for crypto currencies, however my interests soon went much further as I was intrigued to see the whole dynamics of how the site worked. It occured to me then with all the backing it had and the constant expanding network of people on it why was the currency not taking off in the same way as many other ones were. I spent time looking at the charts where i could I could see the highest value the steem currency reached was back in july 2016 which was 4.21 usd. Now a year later it sits at 1.73usd . As ive stated my interest in steemit is for the content of the site and not for the steem and my little investment in it but i am surprised with the numbers of users and acclaim that the site is receiving how its tokens are not becoming more in demand. I guess the value of a currency is subject to the use or trade that an individual sees for it but what makes steem less useful to people than litecoin or dash. Granted it is sitting a number 14 out of over 700 but i cant help but feel it should be much higher,The very virtue of the massive community behind it would make me think it should be thriving. Has anybody else any views on this ? Id be interested to hear other peoples opinion.