I got accepted to be a beta user/tester of Prism. For now the fees are waived. Moreover, I'm quite surprised at where you got the numbers. There is a June 1 blog on Shapeshift that is different than what your article mentions https://info.shapeshift.io/blog/2017/06/01/prism-fee-update
For Beta all the fees are waived for sure, except the 2.4% closing fee. But the monthly fees don't exist. However for the post-Beta the fees will be "market-based:" "paid by Buyers to Sellers, or Sellers to Buyers, wherever the equilibrium exists at a given point in time. That was always the long-term plan, so we’ve done away with the arbitrary 1% placeholder in the interim. "
Now here is my impression: In the long run there will be a few cryptocurrencies remaining. They will have all the features of anonymity in transactions, be limited in number of coins (so that they are not inflationary) have super fast transactions, feature smart contracts on the blockchain, and maybe have more features we don't know about yet. I think within five years we will know which the top three will be.
Another point is that the price volatility will dampen tremendously so as to make Prism no longer useful for speculating on currencies. I was at the San Diego meetup in June and the CFO mentioned that Prism will accomodate other forms of investing than currencies. I think it has to do with smart contracts. Moreover, Prism will also go on the Bitcoin blockchain so that you can use a Bitcoin wallet to invest in a Prism.
My original reason of getting into cryptocurrency is to get away from fiat currency and the fractional reserve system. Not really to make a profit on coin appreciation but I guess I finally got caught up. I think the average annual gain of mature cryptocurrencies will be close to 4%.
For me, it's too early to say if I will be in this long term. It depends on what the "market rates" of fees will be.