This is strange.  Bitcoin is more a libertarian concept than a technology.  The blockchain is a technology invention that made the libertarian concept of a cryptocurrency possible.

What we are seeing (and I applaud it being a libertarian myself) is exactly the freedom we are longing for.  Predator and prey, greed and scam, the powerful and the weak, hopes and deception, wild swings, ups and downs: that IS liberty.  The "human element" is exactly what we want to liberate, and what you call the destructive powers is exactly the freedom we are longing for.  So what's the problem

Bitcoin is an element of libertarian freedom, and is behaving also in that way.

To me, this is all just great !  What did you expect, maybe ?  Freedom means also that you shouldn't count on any specific behavior of others to achieve something.  Freedom means exactly that: freedom.  

I would even think that high gains and high losses, despair and so on, are a very good way to distribute seigniorage well amongst people.  The early adopters will have taken profit, or will have made huge losses, and the seigniorage that would have been theirs will not be theirs as they will have gone through many periods of despair, having handed over their coins to others, with profit or with loss.  This cycle may repeat itself several times, to shake out the early coins several times, and randomly distribute it.

There always has to remain the doubt of bitcoin failing.  If it weren't, coins wouldn't get redistributed, but would simply be held indefinitely.  The genuine possibility of bitcoin failing is part of the distribution scheme.  But then, it also has a genuine probability to fail !