It did get me thinking, though, if STEEM was my gateway currency to other blockchain tokens, I wonder if that's the case on a massive level.

Look at this report from @lukestokes https://steemit.com/exchangereport/@lukestokes/exchange-transfer-report-12-03-2017-to-12-09-2017

It shows us that those pushing the price of steem down are not authors but early adopters/miners.
There is more money coming into steem than being cashed out by authors. Just check transactions going out to exchanges ( from regular authors exclusively) and compare it to @lukestokes report above.

The problem is lack of volume. There is not enough buyers to absord sell pressure which is why it takes many months for those early adopters to get rid of their stake at a price that they want.

I think the reason there is very little volume is because speculators are out of the game. They think that "if you can earn steem by doing social media why would you even bother buying it" or that " steem has huge inflation because to pay everyone they must print a lot of new tokens". It's a perception issue.

Most speculators are not touching steem only investors who have done their homework and users powering up are buying steem ( basically real demand), so steem is a lot closer to the real price. 99% of altcoins are overvalued, they are just being pumped by speculators and my guess is that speculators couldn't resist pumping SBD too.

Patience is key, it will take time for those early steemians to sell but when they are done the price is going to rise, that's what the current stats tells us and that's without the help of speculators even.