Broadly, I agree with you, Bitcoin has not yet lived up to the hopes and dreams of the early days. But that isn't the whole story, and it is not really honest

Broadly, I agree with you, Bitcoin has not yet lived up to the hopes and dreams of the early days. But that isn't the whole story, and it is not really honest to pretend like it is. While it has not become a widely-adopted currency, or even a widely-used payment settlement mechanism, it has become wildly successful as a speculative investment and on that basis it has burrowed deeply into the public consciousness. So while it's normally the case that when a new innovation comes along and fails to cross the adoption "chasm", we can close the book and say that it has "failed"; the odds it will have another chance are approximated by zero. But it appears that time remains on the side of bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Look how many headlines there are about crypto at the moment. We're talking about it on Hacker News, and the whitepaper was released in 2008. Crypto will almost assuredly get many more chances to eventually cross the chasm... perhaps someday it will succeed, when volatility has settled down and L2 technology is mature. We are still in the "periodic block halvings drive crazy bubbles" stage of life, but the impact of the halvings are sinking exponentially into irrelevance. In the end, you might be right; Bitcoin may never be a currency used for mundane payments. In fact, I personally agree that you probably will be right about that; the competing solutions are much, much better than they were in 2008. But it is simply too early to say, and it is definitely not "totally clear".