If the Counterparty protocol has great value (as I'm sure that it does), then so does XCP.
I like your mantra to do everything which can be done in bitcoin with bitcoin - but until now your conclusion given above does not work. I think there is a consensus that the counterparty protocol is helpful and has a lot of value, but you'll not find within the altcoin space a project where the disparity between the protocols "value" differs so much from the coins value.
I know that you guys are doing a wonderful job and I have absolutely no doubt that it will work in the end, but to give the project value you need to find a good solution for the currency.
At the risk of misinterpreting Adam, I think his point is that Counterparty is not just an amalgamation of features, but a financial ecosystem, in itself. The features are supposed to tie in with and complement each other, though admittedly it is also possible for features to succeed alone (such as crowdfunding and speculation). The point is that when the entire Counterparty ecosystem is more developed and adopted, the value and use-cases for XCP are more obvious and its utility.
It is short-sighted to give undue priority to XCP over Bitcoin: many people (including serious investors) are just getting used to Bitcoin, and, indeed, the investors that I know point to Bitcoin's illiquidity as a point of failure, and a deterrent from investing. If, now, you tell them that your new protocol requires an entirely new, (currently) extremely illiquid asset in order to use its features, you are much more likely to alienate them,
Moreover, the argument that forcing people to use the native currency unnecessarily will solve the liquidity problem of that currency is probably not true: you will rather just encourage people to move to a platform whose native currency is not unnecessarily required.