Turning to your comparison to the rise of the Internet, I think you're misunderstanding why the internet took so long to go mainstream. In the 70s and 80s, almost nobody had the hardware, and when they did, leased lines were outrageously expensive. But anybody who did get connected found immediate utility via email, file transfer, chat, message boards, and games. The software was immediately useful to average people. And that immediate utility was what drove Internet adoption.
I'm glad that you enjoy maximalists, and whatever they do it's certainly no skin off my nose. But you might consider that hype can harm technology adoption. Reasonable people argue that Google Glass's giant smoking crater set AR back. And the hype and crash of the Segway did no favors for the more immediate uses of that technology, like Kamen's wheelchairs.
I'd also point out that however much Jobs sung the praises of the crazy ones in ads, he rarely let hype run ahead of consumer utility for his products. Crazy things stayed in the lab, and were polished until they actually worked for real people. As Jobs said, real artists ship. Personally, I'd love to see more of that ethos from the blockchain world.