Great article and excelent comments by jbn, I only want to share with you some interesting facts to take in account.
The main idea to develop the criptocurrency concept, is to build a new mechanism (in this case throught an asset) for change all our actual economic system, because this is a old system, unsafety, with too much burocracy, corruption and problems.... in fact this topic reborn with the scandal of Madoff in Wall Street, on December 2008, perhaps it's a too ambicious idea, but it's the main idea, If today we have a bubble by several speculator who want buy cheap and sell expensive, this is real, but remember the dot com bubble... nowadays, Internet still alive and the e-commerce market is bigger. In my opinion, this is a temporal situation and will be regularized as soon the use of criptocurrencies could be feasible and practical for ordinary people.
I am agree with you when you said that "Most currencies are not yet in actual use, so it is speculation that these projects will prevail", but inclusive the situation is worst, remeber two things
1.- Not all this criptocurrencies are developed to be used in projects... If you want replace the USD with BTC, this change could take years figthing against the stablisment, against the status quo, but beyond that, fighting against our fear as simple citizen, this movement must be builded based on massive trust in BTC and the transition must be step by step to reduce collateral damages (in my opinion)....
2.- The ICO (Initial Coin Offering) as a fundraising option, today we are living in another bubble, the ICO Bubble, I can understand that today is difficult obtain pre seed capital, seed capital, etc... and perhaps we were unfortunately witness of the dead of great projects, and good ideas because of some bank, venture capital, or entrepreuner guru who cut the funds if not see inmediatly earnings or simple sell the startup, the same speculation mind...buy cheap and sell expensive as soon as possible... but this not justify, a massively movement to the other extreme, and now you can see thousands of people, new investor and experienced, gurus and ludopaths, traders and bankers, all playing the same game, all beting on ICOs without the minimun support...
What's going on??? from one extreme to other, look into Fiverr with "ICO Whitepaper" as subject.... People writing ICO WP from USD 50 based in the number of words???? what's going on??? the ICO KPI is based on kilograms of paper???
Friends, in conclusion, I love technology, I believe in technology as a tool to improve our lives, but certainly some days I don't undestand people.... this bubbles are made by experts, gurus, companies and ordinary people in the last place.... and where is the common sense??
seeya criptofriends....
link to fiver ICO