stop being utopists, centralized always win
That's the $21 million dollar question, right?
Bitcoin is an experiment of decentralization in the extreme.
There is no other decentralized project that even approaches it's level of decentralization while including decent network effects.
All other coins have some centralization aspects that are much greater than bitcoin's.
So, whether utopian or not, the future is going to show us whether bitcoin continues to progress in a significant way, remains decentralized and continues to attract value into it as the most sound of monies.
There does not need to be any kind of SLAM DUNK win for bitcoin to be successful. Bitcoin is already successful, and continues to be a great investment. Each of us retains the prerogative to diversify into other coins and other assets to the extent that we believe that we need to hedge our bets, and even as the various systems evolve.
So far, when considering both upside potential and downside potential (if you really understand some of these potentialities) bitcoin seems to be the best of the investments and a great place to place and keep value. Personally, I hold back a little bit of the value that I place into bitcoin, and I certainly attempt to keep a decent amount of short term value in fiat related value in terms of both real world practicalities of being prepared to pay bills (such as 6-12 months worth), and the reality of the matter remains that fiat continues to dominate with bitcoin only having less than 1% of the word participating in it - and even those who participate in bitcoin are less than gung ho, and part of their weak-handedness creates additional downward volatility in bitcoin (which is likely to continue for at least 5-10 years into the future).
Don't get me wrong, we are likely to continue to experience both upwards and downwards BTC price volatility, and likely a large reason why we don't go to the moon or mars or pluto in the near future is because there remains a lot of misinformation about bitcoin, and a lack of confidence from the plebs.. surely Devs can continue to build on bitcoin during this slower and down BTC price time in order to better and better prepare bitcoin for greater and greater adoption with the passage of time... no need to hurry because we are solidly on the road, and the movement of the population into bitcoin is seemingly inevitable as long as bitcoin retains its sound money status (and decentralization seems to be part of the BTC sound money value proposition).