<p>I'm surprised none of your friends have ever asked where the money comes from. When you answer that the rewards are tokens generated by the blockchain, the next logical question is who will exchange the tokens for money. The only answer you can give is "investors like you". If that doesn't trigger anybody's scam alert, I don't know what will. Now, the white paper of Steem says advertisers and promoters will buy them to get the attention of people using the network. That's an honest answer I like. But there are many Steemians who are dead set against any kind of advertising or paid commercial promotion on Steem. These people should know that not having fiat revenue streams like that from companies or individuals who are on Steem to buy stuff (attention like advertisers), or be consumers (people who buy STEEM in order to buy services on STEEM), makes Steem nothing but a Ponzi scheme. </p><p>What we need to do is get everybody influential on board with the idea that Steem is a start-up that uses the blockchain for governance and for sharing profits with content producers, investors, witnesses etc. and that its value proposition is the attention of the crowds. When that is done, we can go out and market Steem the way it was meant to be in the white paper. My experience is that the vast majority of intelligent people to whom I've told about STEEM are not swayed by the rewards. They all want to know how the system works. Most of the people I hang out with are intelligent people who are wise to scammers running their scemes. Very few of them are desperate enough to be lured by easy money and all of the are wise enough to know that promises of easy money are nearly always nothing con artists talking.</p>