Your commentary on fiat currencies is directly on the mark. If this concept were to be instituted from scratch, the purveyors of which would be laughed out of the room.
Cryptocurrencies will continue to suffer from misinformation, both un- and intentionally, and will take longer than we'd like to become mainstream. The good news is that it IS happening.
One of the threats to Bitcoin and other solid cryptocurrencies, however, derives from the cryptocurrency world, itself. The advent of ever flimsy and extraneous currencies, and the news of their resultant fraud and misuse, could disrupt the advent and adoption of established ones. Guilt through association, if you will.
This is perhaps the largest threat to the cryptocurrency revolution, and I'm not exactly sure what can be done to avoid or mitigate it.
Great point. One thing which can help is for all of us to reign in our own greed and stop chasing every random ICO we come across. Or, if we do invest in something stupid, own it. Don't expect someone else to come along and bail us out. Be public about our mistakes and our successes.
The ICO are very interesting. They also are potentially a huge platform from fraud. Steemit is the perfect platform for distributing information on the ICO's. It will allow a permanent record. Note: Stock fraud has gone on for a long time and continues to go on. I would love to see a whitelist and a blacklist of ICO's.