To be fair, while Bitshares was a pretty complete failure, BitUSD, which sits on top of it as a "stablecoin" should be regarded as a complete success. Look at the price chart relative to dollars. [1] It only has brief and small excursions away from $1 despite being thinly traded and having very low market cap, and being backed by having a nearly worthless coin, as cryptocurrencies go.

Stablecoins are a very interesting concept. They are a game-theoretically incentive compatible way to stabilize a currency WITHOUT a trusted monopoly producer. [2]

1 - https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitusd/ 2 - https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/11/search-stable-cryptocur...