Interesting story, Acid.
I can totally understand you working for yourself, I has similar experience, I always have problem with someone giving me orders and acting like a boss. I think as human being evolves, future world shouldn't really need those middlemen.
I was getting desperate about buying something for a game I used to play and there were no options for me to pay for it.
I hope I was in that game lol, then I could have become an early adopter or something.
Yet I feel the mass adoption is still a long way.
The beauty of Steem is that mass adoption may not depend on the price or the adoption of other big cryptos such as Bitcoin. With the active dapps that are being developed here and seeing success by themselves it will be enough that one of them does something unique that makes them go viral and everyone will flock to Steem because of it. My bet is on @dlive lately.
I believe in the future of Steem too. @dlive team is really doing a great job. I've been following their updates, fanbase, etc seem really cool.