Bitcoin will never serve as a retail currency as it's entirely inadequate for doing so. It's cost is very high to use and global transaction limit is an embarrassing 7/second. Yes, seven per second. The Lightning network overlay is designed to address that but it's really a bandaid fix. Other cryptos have solved the volume & cost issue and are well able to service many hundreds of thousands of transactions per second at almost no cost whatsoever, so those limits can be cracked in at least a semi-decentralized manner. Technology will break those barriers in time if it has not already done so.

There is no question cryptos are the future. Given they give govs more power, it's inevitable govs will embrace them. The suggestion that CBDC's will destroy the market for free market crypto is lunacy though, as free market cryptos will have their attraction as long as govs and central banks abuse the power of centralized currency, which is to say, always. And if & when people start using CBDC's out of necessity, I say it will normalize crypto as legitimate in the minds of so many people that are not used to the idea of digital currencies and consider bitcoin a ponzi scheme & scam.

Bitcoin rose above $21k in the last couple days. In spite of the huge SBF scandal, crypto continues to live.