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We could consider that the upvotes you make on posts from other users contribute to increase your notoriety and your capital of sympathy from these users and thus, indirectly, can lead to bring you a financial return via upvotes that these would do for you.

However, you are right, gamification as implemented by @steemitboard is more about fun and dopamine is currently your only reward.

We are currently brainstorming on how to improve this while avoiding abuse through the use of bots. Any suggestion is welcome.

I understand the problem and the current version of Steem does not make solving it easy.