I think you're missing the import of Segregated Witness being locked-in for Bitcoin.

The throughput that this allows will significantly change the entire equation for Bitcoin. And we haven't even gotten to sidechains and other enhancements that are coming down the pipe.

The cries to upgrade were largely influenced by non-organic spamming of the mempool, the shared resource that caches transactions until they are included in a block by validation nodes/miners.

This was clearly spam, because the mempool usage dropped significantly after the Segwit lock-in occurred. If it had been organic, then the transaction rate "floor" would've remained the same after the August 1st deadline.

Reference: http://bitcointicker.co/networkstats/

The spike you see now in the mempool is due to the same participants that were trying to force a centralized corporate-friendly "solution" on the market, namely "SegWit2x".

They are using the same tactics as before, hoping to force people to their solution by pointing to the mempool and saying "See? Transactions are slow and expensive!". But this charade won't last long.

First, it takes a bit of money to keep this attack up. Second, once SegWit officially activates around August 22nd, the network throughput will be increased dramatically. Even if the mempool is nearly full, transactions will flow even faster than before.

Its all coming to a head, which is why you are seeing these tactics being used.

Never a dull day in cryptocurrencies.

For a real issue, I suggest looking at Bitfinex and their "QE"-like usage of Tether to float their operations. I suspect they are going to be the next Mt. Gox if they continue.

Reference: https://hackernoon.com/the-curious-tale-of-tethers-6b0031eead87