> And yet that adoption process took around 300 years.

People used ledgers right after they were created, by definition, and long enough to go through all these years without that practice disappearing and without speculation to prop them up. So they brought value from the very beginning. Speculation prevents this logic from applying to blockchains (the value is making money by extracting it from gullible users).

> the trend

Which trend? If anything it's stagnant with just more scams, I still don't know anyone who uses cryptocurrencies for anything other than speculation.