With transaction costs rising above $1 the original promise of cheap remittance using Bitcoin is officially dead.
if you want to transfer a couple of thousands of dollar with bitcoin you still pay the same low fee of $0.7-$0.8 but with a bank you will end up paying a percentage of what you transfer.
so it is still pretty cheap.
Without utility Bitcoin use is limited to speculation only and even further what is there to speculate about?
the higher fees are annoying for sure but there are a lot more to bitcoin than just cheap fees.
and worst things that can happen is that bitcoin can just be an investment that people speculate about. nothing wrong with that

I would like to debate this and gauge the community's response to Bitcoin experiment.
bitcoin was an experiment once, a long time ago. now bitcoin is a real currency that many people recognize it as such and many countries are even starting to do so.