The market does have some effect on it yes. Investors know bitcoin so the rise and fall of bitcoin affects other cryptocurrencies more than it should.

A couple of other things have factored in;

1. Steemit has experienced EXPLOSIVE growth. Unfortunately the majority of that growth has been low value users trying to "get rich" and posting copy-pasted content or low-value posts like "upvote-for-upvote". This is not good for the growth of community value and has caused many of the quality content producers to slow down their own posting and voting.

2. HF19 "Equality" has taken HUGE bites out of the voting pool! Where a minnow used to be able to cast 40 $0.01 votes a day, she can now only cast 10 or 11 $0.02 votes or 20 every 2 days. This has significantly reduced the number of upvotes on posts and comments!

3. TROLLS!
   It only takes two or three people willing to invest $5,000 in their Steemit accounts to ruin the experience for hard working bloggers that are trying to earn our dimes.

I believe Steemit has the opportunity to be something greater than bitcoin because instead of being an arbitrary currency that only exists because it's users agree it has value, Steemit actually provides a REAL PRODUCT on which the value is based. I hope to see a growth in value in the near future.

Hopefully that wasn't too negative ... just my 2 cents