BitShares will not succeed for a variety of reasons. The main being its much to complicated for the average user. Thats all there is to it, 99% of the world wouldn't understand how BitShares works, and they aren't going to take the time to learn how. Bitcoin is a simple concept. Internet money. Done.
Odds are this completely falls apart within the next several months.
1. If you don't try to use it the same way you use Bitcoin, it is actually MUCH easier for newcomers. They just need to simplify the faucet process a little bit.
2. One way or another it will attract people willing to hedge and trade bitUSD, bitGOLD, etc. It will basically be the first decentralized prediction market. This is HUGE, and you don't need everyone to use it. Just the people who have money and like to trade them. Once that happens, it doesn't matter if only 0.001% of the people use it, so long as those are the people who are heavy traders.
3. The fees are absolutely amazingly cheap
4. There is no inflation, in fact there is built in deflation, since portions of the fees are destroyed.
5. There is built in privacy that is way easier than anything else I've seen - send to a name anonymously, that is also HUGE
6. Have you at least tried to see how QUICK the confirmation times are?
7. It burns way less energy than even a PoS solution, since only 101 machines need to be up and running at a time.
Finally I will send you 10 BTSX so you can register and try it out. PM me your account key and I'll fund it.
