I've felt from early in my involvement with Bitcoin that it is inconvenient, expensive, and dangerous [lost/stolen data] to actually use for real world things.  Also that the risks such as loss of privacy, regulatory and legal hassles, etc, are severe.

Also, to your point, that the infrastructure is currently highly subsidized by speculative investment in hardware, increased utilization of otherwise wasted resources (especially bandwidth) and that sort of thing.  The actual cost of a transaction at todays use rates are probably vastly in excess of what the user pays in transaction fees, and probably always will be unless and until the infrastructure of the solution is monopolized by corporate interests.

I've never really felt it likely in the real world that these issues would be overcome even though it would be great in some fantasy-land.

Bitcoin was always, to me, a highly speculative bet with a big potential pay-out, and a political statement, and that remains as strong today as it ever was.  Stronger in fact.  It could be more, and could be a solid foundation of value which is sorely needed in today's political climate, but only if most participants in the ecosystem drop the fantasies about it's useful role and address the real weak links in it's real potential as a robust and defensively protected reserve value store.  This seem as unlikely as ever.  But there is still the potential to make gobs of money screwing with it as long as one is willing to undergo a hell of a lot of inconvenience and accept significant risk.

Obviously I'm prone to being on the sacrilegious end of the spectrum and my views on this have never been well received.  Oh well.  I've been saying this for years, and it's as difficult as ever to deal with Bitcoin...I'm trying to pull some fiat out now which is a nightmare...and putting me in a bad mood.