There is a bigger chance that ETH will be the future of all crypto if its purpose is the same as bitcoin which is a digital money. I was using coins.ph wallet in storing all my coins like BTC, ETH, BCH, and RIPPLE. I tried once to pay bills over the internet using ETH instead of BTC. But for some reasons, I can't use ETH instead PHP and BTC are the only available options to be used in paying bills. I'm looking forward that someday ETH will be used also as a digital money more than its original used as a platform based on blockchain technology that enables developers to build and deploy decentralized applications.
I think it would be just up to the platform if they would accept ETH as a payment option or not because I believe that if they would just tweaked the system for a bit, you can use ETH as payment option because they can still convert it to your currency anyway. Other platforms though accept ETH as payment option because it is cheaper than BTC most of the time as there are times when it becomes expensive when the network is clogged.
Actually you are right lack of good projects impels ethereum inferior 300$. Most part of investors consider that ethereum is being manipulated by whales now but I think there are much more objective reasons why ethereum is so weak. You have noticed brilliantly that there are almost no worth projects which use ethereum and, of course, it is effecting on ethereum badly. I really hope this situation will be changed in the better way soon, maybe in the autumn when people come back from vacations. Anyway I have invested in ethereum and I consider 300$ or even lower is a very low price where investors should buy ethereum
Having an easier way to just have a token without regulation just makes the scammers have more opportunity to scam people hiding behind those paid whitepapers, websites and other things needed to implement an ICO that would let them raise funds and run away with it. There are genuine ERC-20 coins that has good projects but because of those scam ones, maybe half of them or more, it has tarnished its reputation.