the problem started the day we started investing in ICOs because we wanted to become rich. they create a small group of people, mainly in their basement and call that a "company" and then ask for money to solve problems that do not actually exist! then after they receive the money they stop doing anything and move on to creating the next token.
But for some reason many people ignore Bitcoin and think that it's already outdated and prefer some hyped tokens because marketing guys said that they will "change the world".
you talked about criticism but there are none. there has only been FUD and hype about bitcoin. last year a lot of newbies found out about bitcoin and came in, all of these newcomers were told that "bitcoin is expensive and if you want to be rich buy our altcoin". the more each of them invested in each of these shitcoins the more they started defending them. i sometimes see people who have not even used the coin they are defending, all their coins are on the exchange and they have never seen the altcoin's wallet/node,... but still they defend it because they want to make money.