You are making a nice points!
STEEM probably found its bottom in line with the active users it has.
Higher prices requires more users.
On the other hand users will come in mass if the price went up. Especially with STEEM that has a lot of dormant users. Those ones will be the first to come back.
For that we need a pump.
Organic growth from dApps will take a long time imo....years... But in crypto you just never now.
RE: Why it would be hard to pump Steem to $1 and stay there for a year in this bear market.