The exchange situation can be really bad for sure and in the United States people who were participating on things like Local Bitcoins and doing high volume got in trouble. Also the ATM network is important but oftentimes they are just Bitcoin and with all the scaling issues they were rendered useless for the most part during the surge.
I think that Atomic Swaps are going to be extremely important in the future and that is why I have taken a position in Komodo which has BarterDEX which is a decentralized exchange that utilizes Atomic Swaps.
Also if the STEEM ecosystem or one like it can grow big enough to where a lot of people had accounts and money on here there would be more of a potential that people would transact and trade value with their holdings and earnings on here.