I agree with you take on buying and keeping some money behind for future purchases. If I had the money to buy right now, I would do that too.
And yes, with everything Steemit is working on, we can expect a increase in number of users.
One thing though that is seriously overlooked in my opinion is multi-language support.
There is a huge crowd out there that does not speak or understand English, and would not even consider writing in English.
For them the current Steemit is useless. As far as I know that is one of the reasons Golos was created, specifically for the Russian(speaking) community.