Would banks and governments actively work and implement countermeasures to undermine this process? Are the underestimating the potential of cryptocurrencies by investing in some of them?
Do you think there is a possibility of cryptocurrencies being banned in the future for the reason of being a threat to "normal" currencies?
Yes, i think so. They simply have a conflict of interest in bitcoin because of the fact that it is decentralized, and it destroys their power. If they supported bitcoin they are essentially giving up their power as a central bank or big corporations that will for sure get bailed out by the government, and losing out on tons of profits.
Will they undermine this process? Of course they would. Look at how KYC on exchanges have become stricter and stricter over the past few years. It used to be an easy process to buy and sell altcoins, but now it's just as hard as say, buying btc.
But they will fail, imo, because there is no central point of failure. The downfall of libertyreserve and e-gold were that they had a single server hosting the files that the government can shut down. This isn't the same with btc. Now finally, does bitcoin have the potential? Definitely. It has the potential to change the world for the better, if enough people realize that there is a need for decentralization of economics.