my feeling is that it is the hype of it all by the news media introducing more common tire kicker / investor newcomers - myself included.  And yes, it seems that a huge part of the difficulty increases is all this "doubling down" of mining equipment - which because of the massive interest has driven hardware costs up.  I have bought a couple things with crypto - but all mining related.  I am also mining ETH, and cards and power supplies are more than double what they were a year ago.  I am tracking the backlog of BTC transactions, and I think that BTC may not be able to support direct mainstream consumer purchases.  I suppose there are other coins or mediums like the debit card that can consolidate small transactions for a substantial percentage fee.