Thanks for your kind words and more importantly your efforts to help Steem thrive. If it's not too late, could we try to use #fight4steem rather than #fight4steemit? As you mentioned, that's a distinction that a lot of people fail to recognize, but I think fixing that will be an important part of securing Steem's future. There are a lot of great efforts to build on the decentralized Steem platform independent of the centralized Steemit company, and they'll have a much better chance if people get accustomed to differentiating Steem from Steemit.

With regard to security in trading, another option you may not yet be aware of is the decentralized exchanges, my favorite of which is BitShares. Steem is actually based on technology developed for BitShares (which is why it can scale so much better than other blockchains) and Steem was initially built by much of the same team. BitShares features market pegged assets (MPAs) that are fully collateralized and follow the price of other assets. This means you can trade and gain exposure to various other assets while retaining full control of your own private keys and avoiding counterparty risk. There are also user issued assets (UIAs) on the BitShares exchange, but those do involve counterparty risk.