also i disagree with bitcoin having "serious" problems. the biggest problem we have is the war itself not the reason for the war. and mainstream is not gonna happen by just fixing these things, that will take a long time and the willingness of people to use bitcoin not just some speculators hoarding it.
I think current confirmation times, transaction fees and general scalability issues are serious problem for healthy mass adoption - certainly for B2C use cases such as paying for things online and bricks & mortar retailers. Otherwise we will have the exactly scenario you mention - speculators hoarding and little else.