I also believe that the biggest problem will be Apple loading off the fees on the credit cards company. They can't do this with Bitcoin. CC-companies will be gladly paying their share if they can be part of that potential revolution. Who will pay that for Bitcoin? Maybe Satoshi? The Foundation? 
NFC bitcoin payment applications from mobile devices will likely be paid for, directly or indirectly, by the merchant. Even considering the cost of currency exchange, BitPay, for example, is less expensive for merchants than say Visa. Once a tipping point is reached after which merchants prefer to retain bitcoin revenue to pay some of their own expenses with bitcoin, then exchange to fiat is not required.That tipping point cannot be reached without government backing of the currency. Great economic crashes come from regular people speculating. For this tipping point you mention to occur without government backing would require many normal people to become speculators. By many I mean almost everyone and this is not possible.
Bitcoin cannot be government backed because it is proof of concept and it is great at it. This said, crypo-currencies without a doubt will do to money what money did to land and titles. Bitcoin isn't the biggest player in this revolution, it is just the biggest player in the evolution.