Both

I guess Bitcoin is turning out to be the Esperanto of money

> are those things denominated in fiat currency or in bitcoin

By your logic if I exchange dollars for euros to spend on a vacation somewhere that means the dollar has failed ?

At this point, it's a feature to have things denominated in $. I'm likely going to buy a Purism laptop with bitcoin, but of course denominated in $. I spent a couple hundred on BTC years ago, which has generated a nice return. This will be my first purchase, and I'll have plenty of BTC left over. Holding a deflationary currency while the world operates on an inflationary one is fine by me.

What would your bar for success be? I was merely responding in a way that met the parents comments.

Because to claim that bitcoin succeeded as a payment/salary method is ridiculous. Vast majority of bitcoin volume is just speculation on exchanges. The massive price volatility is a testament to why it cannot be used as a currency -- who would want to make a services/job contract that in a matter of a year could change its value by an order of magnitude. The whole point of these contracts is to hedge against future volatility. Remember, if bitcoin goes up then the employer gets screwed, if bitcoin goes down then the employee gets screwed; there is no direction that is good for everyone, only stability is good.

Furthermore, good currency should encourage investment (into things) which means it needs to be (slightly) deflationary (to introduce a cost to not investing into production). Otherwise you get into a paradoxical/toxic situation where NOT producing useful things becomes financially advantageous.