These days I feel like it's more "if it's even a little bit decentralized and uses public key cryptography then you can call it a Blockchain and people will throw money at you". It's the new "Cloud Computing" basically.

Cryptocurrencies are pretty mainstream nowadays, everybody and their grandfather want to be a crypto-millionaire. Very few have the skills to decide whether experimental technologies like Ripple or IOTA have a future[1], it's just speculation for speculation's sake. Ask the average Ripple owner what they think of the "trustlines" and the risks associated with it. Actually, just ask them what a Ripple trustline is. I doubt you'll get many answers.

[1] Honestly I feel pretty knowledgeable about how cryptocurrencies work and yet it's not rare for one of these whitepapers to lose me. For many of them you need a pretty good technical background on cryptography, game theory and economy (with maybe a hint of sociology) to really be able to gauge whether an idea has merit or not.

Blockchains seem to be really good at raising capital.