Bitcoin needs to be traded for goods and services for it to be a viable currency,
that is true.
and that is happening. which is why the price has been going up solidly and staying up. why do you think a decentralized digital currency is worth more than three thousand dollars?
in the past (and currently to a lesser extent) DNMs and illicit trades were the driver for Bitcoin and cryptos worth, but that is never going to support growth into general use.
lesser extent in this context means a percentage so negligible that is is not even worth talking about. specially since you are talking about bitcoin (a non-anon coin) not some anon coin like monero. so i don't even know why you brought this up here!
I believe that 2017/18 was the worst thing to happen to Bitcoin and crypto currency in general,
no it was not. both years were good years with 2017 being one of the best and not because of price but because of the adoption growth that we had. you seem to have forgotten the fact that we took at least 10 big steps in adoption whereas normally 1, 1.5 step per year is taken.
need i remind you of countries such as Japan and their adoption of bitcoin as a legal way of payment?
it burst into the lives of the majority of the population only for them to get fucked by POS scammers, bullshit Facebook scams and ICOs,
so you just explained the thing that has been going on from day on and is still going on!
watch the altcoin market and you will see the bullshit coins every day!
a lot of the DNM sellers and other illicit uses shut shop meaning the use as a currency is declining.
again you are repeating the same thing. they are still accepting anon coins such as monero in dark net, just like before. bitcoin's usage is still the same tiny negligible amount also by those who haven't yet figured out bitcoin is not anonymous.
As a community this large there must be people with the skills and creativity to come up with a sustainable public facing way of using Bitcoin/crypto as a form of currency, be it a Ebay-esque site to trade legal goods, or even setting up local networks for people to trade between themselves.
that is already happening, you just have to stop hanging out in dark net markets and start hanging out in real world where legal infrastructure has been built and has been working for a long time