Maximum profiteering vs Maximum adoption
My thoughts on this, the goal of maximum adoption vs profiteering is a matter of which demographics you want to appeal to. Maximum adoption is much harder because it requires embracing regulation, seeking legitimacy, and building for long term utility. This requires that developers ignore their own personal and political bias and focus on gathering feedback from the actual users of their product. Design improvements have to be based on use (use cases in practice) and not "political agendas".
Bitcoin in my opinion will not be able to do this because Bitcoin itself is a political instrument and the community around it will likely not focus on sacrificing the true Bitcoin for the mainstream Bitcoin. Mainstream adoption is in my opinion the result of society embracing a new technology and this in my opinion only happens when a technology appeals specifically to as many members of society as it can. This global appeal is easier for Ethereum than for Bitcoin because Ethereum is more open, has many more possible use cases, is more global in general, so it appeals to a different audience. Also Ethereum like Ripple appeals to legitimacy by working with large institutions like banks, big blue chip companies, academia, and governments.
To satisfy the user who must be put first if the goal is to achieve maximum utility, is to listen to what the users are asking for at all times and build out according to that feedback. Ethereum is slighly better at this than Bitcoin but not good enough so far to achieve mainstream broad appeal. Ethereum currently is known as a crowd funding and gaming platform, it does these very well but this is about all it is known for by the mainstream. The mainstream audience does not seem to care about Digix, or Augur, or Golem, as these are esoteric nerdy projects which most people don't even understand. What can be done to appeal to everyone else?
What can cryptocurrency do for you?
So far only making $$ has been found to have global appeal. This may change in the future if profit in terms of $$ can be replaced by ROI in terms of something else (such as time saved), but right now while Ethereum can do things decentralized it is not more efficient, and while Ethereum can support businesses in theory using some sort of decentralized cloud computer it is not currently replacing Amazon Cloud Services. So until they get their theoretical non-monetary forms of ROI, we are stuck with only being able to focus on fiat.
Ultimately ordinary people care about what a technology can do for them to make their lives easier. Bitcoin right now does not do this anymore beyond allowing people to make lots of money. If it were making people's lives easier it would be reflected in the adoption and actual usage patterns. The same applies to any other crypto including Ethereum, where real world use patterns can show whether it is making people's lives better or and easier.