As a first approximation, the failure rate of Bitcoin exchanges is 45%. The median lifetime of exchanges is 381 days.
http://www.coindesk.com/45-percent-of-bitcoin-exchanges-fail-study-finds/If you translate the risk of holding a fiat iou on a centralised exchange into an annualised cost, it is an extremely risky proposition.
However someone like me who is doing a lot of trading lately with a portion of my portfolio, it is my only option (BitAssets 1.0 are not liquid enough) and I am in fiat IOU's up to 50% of the time.
I'm not sure about the very short term prospects for BTS price but there is definitely a market for a simple, robust, decentralised blockchain with liquid BitAssets & performance (BTS 2.0) that competes with a centralised exchange. + BitAssets have already been in existence for nearly a year.
Coinbase for example has already received >$75 million in investment and is only currently 7th in daily volume on CMC.
BTS has many areas of opportunity but just becoming a top 10 exchange (With BitUSD being far less riskier than centralised options) would still make it very successful regardless of what happens with Ethereum.