I'm convinced that as we demonstrate more uses for MSC (for instance, the distributed exchange between MSC and child tokens), we'll have more people enter on the buy side.
The 'distributed exchange' has no (practical) UI and is horrible. It is so unusable, that nobody uses it. For user friendliness, MSC gets a clear 'F'. This is why the project is dying. Newcomers are VERY turned off in just a brief moment.
Newcomers are also likely to put their bitcoin into anonymous exchanges that disappear overnight with their life savings. There is no reason why mastercoin needs to be a mom-and-pop exchange of the future. What matters is that it's protocol based and distributed. There's no Karples to suck down your money in Starbucks lattes and leave the leftovers for bankruptcy courts to divy up.
In the future, when large institutions trade large sums digitally between each other, not having a middle man is an incredible advantage. With MSC you could trade a billion dollars with no one change to cheat or steal from either party. It's transparent, open, distributed. That's incredible. Who would put a billion dollars on Bitstamp for example? Great company, but THAT GREAT? with the Distributed exchange you don't have these worries. Maybe it's not super user friendly, but thats because it's truly secure. It will get easier in the future, but for now it's an incredibly powerful tool.