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If the thing Bitcoin offers is censorship resistance, why would anyone use it unless the current financial system really didn't work for them?
I feel the exact same way.
The comfortable (maybe even sane?) path is to only seek permissionless options when you ran out of permission to use the easier, socially accepted option.
In a similar vein, social acceptance of an investment choice (or any choice that is measured in some fiat score) is massively underrated.
My wife had years & years of hangups with wanting to invest in real estate. It made no sense for our lifestyle.
She's a frikkin' accountant (a brilliant one, too, mind you), but even showing her the cold hard math that it doesn't work as well as other, better diversified options barely kept her instincts at bay but couldn't get her to shake that.
It was only then that I even began to understand how her closest social relations (aka. family) were infested with real estate agents who truly believed in the cool-aid they drank and served.
Yet, and here is the kicker, I still underestimate that factor today.
Social acceptance of money matters is a much stronger force than I could have ever imagined. I think those of us who are able to shake off those shackles are rare and have an exceptional edge.
My hope is that this is where the flaw in your reasoning is: Bitcoin is foreign to most people and difficult to use for many. They aren't going to adopt it just to play around with it. Most people adopt new tools when they can't get what they want any other way. If the thing Bitcoin offers is censorship resistance, why would anyone use it unless the current financial system really didn't work for them?
I'm more optimistic about Bitcoin than you. It may feel like most of the people are here for NGU and nobody really uses it, but there are little cracks here and there into which it goes and finds a foothold and begins to grow like some ugly weed.
I don't mean to be complacent. There certainly is a world where Bitcoin fails, but I don't think we are at all locked in to such an outcome.