A healthy debate.
Tone Vays should join Steemit then he can have a more informed insight into how the system works. Someone should tell him it's free to join and he doesn't need to spend any BTC/ USD.... if STEEM/ Steemit is a ponzi, it's the worse ponzi in the world!
He may even get rewarded for his scepticism (however misguided).
The only people that can potentially lose out are those that buy STEEM, speculating on its future value (or just to have more influence on the platform). It's high risk and high reward for people that go down this route. However this is the same for every cryptocurrency being traded on Exchanges. If STEEM is a ponzi because of this then all cryptos are ponzis!
The difference with STEEM/ Steemit is it has a real life use case (people find value reading/ consuming the content of others every day) and people do not need money or technical knowledge to join the eco-system. It's revolutionary in it's simplicity in that regard.