Steem is the only blockchain technology I'm actually using actively at the moment. To be honest, I see no long-term future of the "flagship", Bitcoin.

I second both of these points. Other than being, more or less, the only way in/out of the various "crypto" projects, I haven't used bitcoin for anything, and don't really see much of a use-case for it. Steem is the only "coin" I've been using at all, and that's really the main thing about it that makes me optimistic about it.

I've seen some interesting things floating around about RavenCoin -- and they seem to be handling this ruthless market about as well as any project out there.

It's a shame that everything seems to be intrinsically linked w/ BTC -- as it's dragging everything down with it (though, down from a what appears to be an illegitimate ATH)