No wonder why crypto first thrived in the underground--in the deep web for instance--
before it came out into the open and eventually into the mainstream arena.
i disagree mainly because it wasn't that big but the media made a big deal out of it like they always do with these small stories. but also because it is harder for a shop that is legit to accept bitcoin specially in countries that don't see bitcoin as a currency, they have to jump through hoops even if they wanted to add bitcoin so they think twice and that means slower adoption but in anywhere that is not regulated like the deep web you can do anything you want.
You have some nice points. Perhaps the media indeed made a mountain out of a mole hill for Bitcoin and this whole cryptocurrency thing but it came a little late. By the time the media turned its attention to Bitcoin, it already showed some great potential, turning from being almost worthless to a few dollars in value. That was already a big deal. You are right that shops did not accept Bitcoin at the start. That would be absurd for them since only a very small percentage of people know about it. Even almost a decade from its beginning, shops accepting Bitcoin are still very few. But even so, we have seen an enormous growth of the value of Bitcoin.
last year changed a lot about bit coin though. it was not just a huge price rise, it was a huge adoption that happened around the world. when Japanese did announce bitcoin as a legal way of payment, that adoption as a currency pushed everything forwards by a great deal which meant a lot of people changed their minds about bitcoin and it washed away 8 years of FUD for many of them. and the merchant adoption of course grew big.