One major point you bring up is the desperate need for steem/fiat pairings. The fact that you have to go from STEEM to something else before going to fiat is a major drawback. Like you said, it increases the risk.

As for the volatility, we will see if/when that settles down. In general, that is one attack on crypto that cannot be disputed...the volatility of the tokens makes it difficult to conduct commerce. Over time, it should lessen a bit but it might not. That is why Bitshares created the pairs that are held at a dollar so that merchants can price stuff accurately.

For this entire arena, we are so early that it is hard to tell what will unfold.