.. Do we allow some sort of backdoor regulation that would increase its acceptance ...
Scaling has nothing to do with regulation. Nothing.
So, if all the banks in the USA, due to some regulatory act, decided to include Bitcoin in their financial platform and everybody started using it at once, would bitcoin be robust enough to handle that traffic?
Of course not. But by your reasoning, scaling is also dependent on intergalactic relations. If Saurians from Andromeda decided to adopt Bitcoin, would Bitcoin be robust enough to handle that traffic?