What if the bitcoin trend initially made people skeptical?
It did make people skeptical but Bitcoin proves itself that there is nothing to be skeptical about.
Just remembered the case of the black market operation "Silkroad" that collapsed. There is also the Mt.Gox hack which I believe is more of a heartbreaking milestone. Both are widely mentioned in the news media.
Any kind or form of currency is used for illegal things. So Bitcoin being used for illegal trade is unavoidable. The good news is that fiat currency is way used for money laundering and almost all kinds of illegal trade. So if they throw stones at Bitcoin being used on that matter, then a huge rock can be thrown at government-issued currency in terms of scope and how larger it is used in illegal trades.
Not everyone knew about bitcoin before 2017. It was all over the internet at that time because of the peak bitcoin price reached in that particular year. Many new people invested into ICO's and business opportunities were created with bitcoin.
Most people had probably already been exposed to media coverage on Bitcoin by then. ICOs or the ICO craze as I like to refer to it as; just ballooned the popularity of cryptocurrencies, probably beyond what any of us would predict at that time. I'm still not sure if ICOs benefited Bitcoin or if it's something that tarnished Bitcoin, and therefore prevented further adoption. Bitcoin was already doing good things before 2017.
However, it's true a certain amount of adoption came after ICOs started to collapse. Then we had the NFTs, but not to the same scale, and we'll likely have something comparable in the near future.
Obviously, when people got interested they first look at it in media coverage but sadly Bitcoin was covered with negative connotations during the early times. But all these negative things had been cleared by Bitcoin and community that is why Bitcoin is survive and been treated by some countries as special.