Back in 2009 when I was getting into bitcoin, it was widely described as a "stateless currency" and not just an alternative to Visa or credit cards. Having a background in economics, bitcoin looked to me like a truly revolutionary technology and if it was adopted en masse would change politics forever. The problem however is that a nation's currency is arguably the primary source of it's sovereignty. Whomever control…
The actual game of business is played out in the provision of goods & services that people want. Currency is the score. You need a means of keeping score in order to play the game, and when one doesn't exist, it will be created. And it helps if more people agree on the means of keeping score; it makes it easier for them to play together. But it doesn't really matter whether that's dollars or euros or pounds or drachmas or cigarettes. People use the currency that the people they want to play with use; the dollar is popular because many people want to play with the U.S. They don't adopt a new currency unless there is no alternative way of keeping score.
The problem with Bitcoin is that most mainstream goods & services providers didn't really want to play with the people who used it. When they did, they went through intermediaries like Coinbase who immediately exchanged it for dollars. Bitcoin caught on because there was a vacuum in the currency space for people that wanted to trade illegal drugs or move money out of China. It fails because this vacuum doesn't extend to the majority of the population.
It's worth remembering this when evaluating other emerging technologies. Look for what people want, places where there's a current lack of available solutions, and ignore the ones that theoretically could change everything if only large groups of people did things that aren't really in their personal interest.