Basically all I see this doing is pushing Moneros timeline back a few years but when it pops out on its own it will explode and not return. Which is not a big deal as all the original holders have all made their investment returns (except idiots like me and those that got scammed).
Exactly. Monetary status will emerge from economic realities, not marketing and exchange listings. The race is to building an unstopable and uncensorable protocol, not who can secure the best backroom deals for exchange listings with their pre-mine. Anyone use verge on PornHub yet?

The monero devs are squarely focused on what matters: hardening the protocol.
We are watching the nascent steps of this monetary status emerge in literal slow motion. It's going to be painful sometimes. Such is the nature of watching exponential growth from a human perspective fixed to about 0.2 seconds.