Cryptocurrencies are a spectacularly bad counterexample. If password-derived private keys had ever become commonplace, the ensuing theft would have absolutely d

Cryptocurrencies are a spectacularly bad counterexample. If password-derived private keys had ever become commonplace, the ensuing theft would have absolutely dwarfed the losses from lost wallet keys. I'm not sure if there's even a comparable instance of successful widespread public-key cryptography adoption.