Many very good questions in this. And I've wondered a lot of the same things. I've been in Bitcoin for quite some time now. And I've seen it evolve, I've seen the narratives change.
An interestingly we're all coming around to something Hal Finney said a long long time ago. About the way we would transact with it.
The way "banks" with a SMALL b would change and help us transact.
And yet the money printers (Banks with a big b). see the writing on the wall. And they are not going out with a whimper.
I'm not sure I ever really believed we would get here.
Yet here we are.