> but I have a hard time wrapping my mind around how anyone can call financial instruments with more volume than the NSYE and a higher market cap than any company in the world anything but "successful" already
That's a very odd metric.
The success of the NYSE is its ability to raise money to new (or experienced) companies.
https://www.whitecase.com/insight-our-thinking/global-ipos-m...
That is, NYSE doesn't exist to trade stock. NYSE exists to raise money (and as a side effect, trades stock). Companies who need servers, factories, or other equipment go to NYSE (or Nasdaq, or other exchanges around the world) to IPO (for new companies), or Secondary Offerings (for established companies).
We measure the amount of money raised each quarter in the tens-of-billions. This creates new companies, new factories, new equipment and catapults our economy into the future.
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In many ways, the trading activity is a side-show, just there to enable the raising of new money. (The easier it is to trade stock / exit a position, the more likely people are to buy stock in the first place).
There was a time a few years ago when cryptocoins were trying to be a new grounds for raising money. But that effort failed ("Initial Coin Offerings" are so full of scammers and rug-pullers you'd be an idiot to participate in one today). But even at its peak, it never succeeded at raising money like the NYSE does.
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So now I ask: what value does coin volume have for society? I posit, not much value at all. Its a distinction without much importance.
The other measure of success is maybe transaction-volumes. But this too is under decline. I'm pretty sure "peak cryptocoin" was ~5 years ago when Steam and other webpages tried to use BTC to buy video games, fund microtransactions and other such services. Alas, $50 transaction fees put a dampener on that, especially since video games were $20. It turns out that the system cannot support a large number of transactions.