I'm glad to see your situation is improving and you're back to posting, we can never have enough fine logical reasoning here on STEEM.
As for YouTube, its just an unfortunate victim of Google's monetization system that relies on the approval of advertisers. In this case "Free Is Not Freedom" for both Google and the users of YouTube, unfortunately.
Some of YouTube's tiny alternatives like Dailymotion and Veoh are still around, but they are very limited in their free offering and have zero discoverability. Now that I think about it, all YouTube alternatives (including crypto ones) basically boil down to off-site hosting that you have to link to -- none of them is a viable alternative in terms of attracting an audience.
And as for the crypto bear market, lots of folks hoped the bottom would appear sooner -- including the large financial institutions, that's why so many of them announced crypto initiates during the extended trend lull, with most of them now on hold. Everyone hoped for faster regulation and who could have predicted the BCH flame war nonsense that was definitely the catalyst for the last large confidence drop? I've invested at a higher price as well, but remembering the mantra "Don't invest what you can't afford to lose" I didn't overstretch myself. I suppose I should have also practised the "Don't try to catch a falling knife" and "Follow the trend, the trend is your friend" rules.
As for recruitment, there has been a lot of discussion surrounding the topic, particularly now that Steemit Inc has had to downsize, but personally I support the view of industry leaders outside of STEEM that say "being associated with crypto is no longer enough to be attractive, we need economically and functionally superior dApps". That's just the reality of the situation. It's a marketing education staple that "most people want comfort or monetary gain first and only then choice (freedom)".