Not many post shed light on the hocus pocus of Steem's ability to jump beyond $1.0. I think, universally, steem has had an issue with advertising its own service. steemit.com is the face of steem, but most have not heard of steemit.com because it isn't heavily advertise.

Does the 1 week waiting period still exist for steemit registration? Id think
if it was still in place, there is a scalability issue, which is why advertising it now isn't in the works.

Busy.org is now up and running, which is an alternative service to access the same blockchain as steemit.com does. Its only a matter of time before more people come out with more stuff. utopian.io will help launch much of that forward, so as long as they can fish enough developers.