But some decentralized digital coin in some form seems like a good idea. The concept of a transaction log that tracks your money from start to finish is also interesting.
Bitcoin will remain a pyramid scheme due to its deflationary nature. But maybe a future coin can be invented that solves the problems with bitcoin?
I think the example from fiction, Cryptonomicon, is actually very helpful, because they understood they needed a big honking pile of gold to kick-start the legitimacy of the whole thing, if it's just free floating then it too easily becomes a pyramid scheme and you have people who just do currency exchanges but who never actually use the new currency as money. You want people to hold onto money because it's money, not because they think the money can go up in value, that's precisely what you don't want.
Unfortunately, there are now a lot of people in the bitcoin world who do what the exchange rate of bitcoins to go up, because they view bitcoin's as an investment and they still view dollars as "real money". And in most ways they aren't wrong. But they're also making it harder for anyone else to use bitcoins just as money.
Do you really want to change the system? Write blogs. Write books. Start a business. Do investigative journalism. Speak at rallies. Work on a campaign. Run for mayor. Run for congress.
There are a million ways to empower yourself and others, using bitcoin isn't any of them.
Imagining that bitcoin is the answer is about as naive as imagining that hitting "like" on your facebook feed is going to magically feed some starving child somewhere.