Ha, not a lot of other Gen Z folks here during the bear market 'cause most of them are busy chasing instant gratification. I'm still here though, and not planning on leaving any time soon :)
It is a bit tricky with the economy right now, I have some money in index funds, but I'm a bit undecided whether I should continue putting money to those, especially to the ones that are only based on stocks, because there is the anticipation of eventual crash in the air. It all might feed into crypto though, when people are looking for alternative preservatives of value where their money doesn't get eaten by negative interest rates and inflation. Steem is pretty cool in that regard that Steem Power gets directly 15% of the inflation.
It makes a ton of sense to invest a small amount of savings or from your paychecks to give yourself this opportunity.
The upside potential is huge especially for a project like Steem that just keeps on chugging increasingly harder development wise despite the long bear market that has pushed the value the lowest in the 2+ year period I've been here. It seems like the price has found a floor though with Steem's Bitcoin price having remained consistently in the 1500-1900 Satoshi's range since August.
The EIP came just in the eleventh hour – I think the bid bot economy was definitely a big factor that was devaluing Steem, dropping its rank as low as it has. Now bid bots are not a problem anymore though, and users are powering up more than down, so it makes me think that we are finally on a way to slow recovery. I'm well positioned for it since I've stacked nicely during these prices to 10k+ Steem Power :) Also getting some more Bitcoin since it has a pretty established position in the market so I don't think it is going away any time soon.
I've actually gotten few friends involved with Steem. Luckily I was patient with my timing, and I got serious about getting them to understand the ecosystem only recently at the current prices when the upside potential is massive. Sold them some of my own liquids to make their onboarding as easy as possible. They will thank me later (hopefully) :)
Steem needs a massive turn around, though it isn't impossible for it to happen. It does seem to have a lot of things going for it. Most of the double digits of people I have brought to steem have left, though there are still a few stragglers left hoping for second act.