Had bitcoin not been sold as a way to get rich, it's likely that most people would have still never heard of it.

It's unfortunate that most people misunderstand what Bitcoin is because they can only think of it in terms of legacy financial instruments (ie, treat it like a stock).

However, there's no doubt that many people who are in it for the technology and liberty got to know about it because someone else made money and started bragging.

This is something I've understood for awhile; I agree with you in all but timing. I think the original idealism behind crypto-currency started to die when the first providers and vendors started accepting bitcoin for services or products.

Those first few folks made a decision, either consciously or subconciously, and it was based on how much 1btc is worth. Ideologically, it's worth 1btc. So either they accept that, or they themselves begin to shape the exchange rate to other currencies.

The beginning of the end was probably well before that; it started with whoever the first person to exchange btc for other currencies was.

It _is_ a pyramid scheme, in which the originators and some early adopters all of the BitCoin. 0.1% of bitcoin owners have over 50% of all BitCoin. 1% of owners have over 90%. That's 2017 data. If adoption grows, the fractions of owners will essentially drop by another factor of 10.

These people's coin cannot be devalued by inflation - only by dumping Bitcoin. So encouraging adoption is encouraging buying into the pyramid scheme and enabling these people to use their ill-gotten gains to take people's stuff.

  co-opted by mining

Mining is a fundamental requirement for crypto..