The reason we have 100s of shitcoins (even speculators don't realize they are shit, e.g. MaidSafe) and nothing really substantial is because nothing other than PoW (and its flaws) can function without whales:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1799665.msg17950272#msg17950272 (<--- read all my comments in the linked thread, not just the linked one)