My answer...
BTS changed the supply rules and stopped focusing on developing the optimal SmartCoin product in favour of a range of other features.
This was the vision that created a speculative $100 million + valuation at one point for BTSX by itself...
BitShares is a revolutionary new bank and exchange that could rival the value of the largest banks in the world such as JP Morgan and Bank of America in just a few years. How could this new upstart grow so quickly? BitShares offers a bank account that earns 5% interest where funds can be transferred in minutes anywhere in the world with more privacy and security than a Swiss bank account. Your account can never be frozen, your funds cannot be seized, and the bank can never face collapse due to loan defaults or fraud. All of this is made possible without requiring any employees, lawyers, regulatory compliance, vaults, buildings, and other infrastructure required by traditional banks. Unlike existing banks, you can hold your balance denominated in gold, silver, oil, or other commodities in additional to national currencies.
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,12.msg18927.html#msg18927
Now that the merger is coming to an end and the current supply rules have been firmly in place, the market may once again start to view BTS as a crypto-currency that won't be diluted/merged at the whims of CNX/Other. By adding liquidity subsidies, potentially tweaking some parameters and even having a yield promotion, BTS can still rapidly deliver that vision.
A good case study is ING Direct, which started in 1997, doing away with traditional branches & which rapidly attracted millions of customers and billions in deposits.
Kuhlmann founded ING Direct Canada in 1996.[4] ... and led its growth to become the largest savings bank and number one direct bank in the United States, with more than $90B in deposits and 7.8M customers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkadi_Kuhlmann
That same entrepreneur started Zenbanx in 2015, https://www.zenbanx.com/ , which I referenced in another thread which has a lot of features & approaches BTS could potentially emulate https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,22656.msg294661.html#msg294661
I'm well aware of these problems and I share your analysis.
Take a look a the article and you'll see that the purpose of the article is to try to change the negative perception on BitShares by the cryptocurrency communities. There is a little of everything : great tech, news features coming soon, OL, OpenPOS, … investment opportunity, hope, …
It contains exactly the kind of information that would make me change my mind about BitShares if I would have a bad perception of it. That’s the main purpose of the article.
A little bit of awarness and understanding around BitShares meanwhile November is coming ;p
Our dev depends on our market capitalisation ... we can't be happy our current situation nor we can wait for november to start evovling again.