Shapeshift requiring membership is another setback for those who claim decentralization and anonymization is the way forward.  It's very hard to do business legally and transact for global customers without having a central entity collecting account information.

Altcoins refer to specifically protocol level tokens right?  I think eventually most of the current ones will be gone, unable to execute and phased out.  There should be some kind of interoperability so that end users don't have to deal with holding thousands of altcoins

Bitcoin volatility has attracted a vast amount of traders, because you can simultaneously lose your shirt or achieve incredible gains quickly.  So from that perspective day traders love it. 
However as a currency method, bitcoin's volatility keeps it from being a stable coin capable of storing value.  Stable coins are characterized by minimal volatility.  If you look at the volatility in traditional foreign exchange markets, they have some of the lowest volatilities out of any asset class in the world.