> The idea that it isn't succeeding because unnamed bureaucrats is misleading.
You use two distinct definitions of success here. As a means to transfer value beyond governmental control, Bitcoin has succeeded. You can do it any time, provided you are fine with your value stored in Bitcoins.
The other definition is "anybody can use it without the fear of ever being scammed and the regulators can not make using it inconvenient or legally dangerous". This is obviously impossible - the regulators can declare anything they want to be illegal (even the Constitution is only a weak impediment, and it does not have any barriers preventing financial regulation, and as long as people do transactions, they could scam each other. This is absolutely unrealistic and non-sensical definition of "success" - nobody ever could deliver on this, including every existing payment system, where people get absolutely scammed all the time.