Yes Bitcoin has all the potential to be a new era of currency. I believe some other altcoins also have this potential. More importantly, bitcoin brought a huge shift of how we think about money. More and more people realize the usefulness of crypto money. The total usage and market cap is very small compared to classic currencies but this is changing day after day.

Today we are already at 130bn+ USD total marketcap

And this is how it looked around the date this post was made last year... Compare the two and think a little how much money poured into the crypto world in 11 months.
https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/20160918/