That's not true, as is obvious with only basic fact checking. Apart from it not being obvious what you mean by "internet" (does ARPANET count?), the internet proper saw its first commercial access providers appear in 1989[1] and it certainly was nowhere near popular in 1999 as it is now. In fact, I would say the change from that period is almost fundamental. Remember, 56k modems were popular back then and a very small part of the world's population had internet access.
My point is, this certainly fits into the larger picture of where Bitcoin is right now. It's vastly more popular then 10 years ago, because now my plumber and barber ask me about it, it is regularly talked about in the news and there are almost no countries without laws enacted as a response to it.
The internet had 248 Million users in 1999 [1] Bitcoin has, estimating very liberally ~28M users worldwide [2].
> It's vastly more popular then 10 years ago, because now my plumber and barber ask me about it, it is regularly talked about in the news and there are almost no countries without laws enacted as a response to it.
Nobody's disputing that. As in my previous examples, we've all heard of 3D televisions, segways, HD DVD's, 8-track, beta max, Theranos, Juicero, and tons of other laughably bad ideas. That doesn't indicate success.
[1] https://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm
[2] https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoin-users/
And for every technological advance met with skepticism that eventually succeeded, there are orders of magnitude more that crashed and burned (e.g., the segway, 3D televisions, HD DVD, and countless others)