> Bitcoin has a lot of problems as a unit of account and as a store of value, but that is not primarily what Satoshi was building (https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf). Bitcoin is, and has always been, a medium of exchange first and foremost.
Which is consistent with the primary function and origin of money: because there is a division of labor it means a common medium of exchange must exist. The secondary functions of money - store of value and unit of account - are precisely that...secondary. You can't have the secondaries without the primary (see: gold). I sort of wish the OP wouldn't have made the characteristic of money as being a medium of exchange out to be a "oh well money is also this". The problem is that the press got a hold of Bitcoin for it's secondary reasons and drove the eyeballs to that without defining the problem to begin with: our medium of exchange, globally, is broken.
IMHO, Bitcoin adoption curve is taking exactly the course it should be: the exchanges that are at most threatened by poor inefficiencies ("third world") are seeing the most benefit. The first world doesn't have a problem moving money because there are solutions...they just cost money. Third world doesn't have solutions. Once they all see benefit the "first world" will adopt. It won't happen overnight and it shouldn't.
You have the supervenience[0] of "medium of exchange" and "store of value" reversed. If something is valuable then there will be demand for it. In fact value and demand in the domain of economics, according to Aristotle, are equivalent. (Aristotle also wrote over two thousand years ago that money is not "real" but that's another story.) When there is demand for something it can become a medium of exchange. Asserting that something is a medium of exchange does not make it so unless there is underlying demand for that something.
Primary and secondary is the wrong way to think about. "Medium of Exchange" is a high-level property that depends on the lower-level property "In Demand". And that is why the value of, or the demand for, bitcoin is critical to its success as a payments platform.
Which is consistent with the primary function and origin of money: because there is a division of labor it means a common medium of exchange must exist. The secondary functions of money - store of value and unit of account - are precisely that...secondary. You can't have the secondaries without the primary (see: gold). I sort of wish the OP wouldn't have made the characteristic of money as being a medium of exchange out to be a "oh well money is also this". The problem is that the press got a hold of Bitcoin for it's secondary reasons and drove the eyeballs to that without defining the problem to begin with: our medium of exchange, globally, is broken.
IMHO, Bitcoin adoption curve is taking exactly the course it should be: the exchanges that are at most threatened by poor inefficiencies ("third world") are seeing the most benefit. The first world doesn't have a problem moving money because there are solutions...they just cost money. Third world doesn't have solutions. Once they all see benefit the "first world" will adopt. It won't happen overnight and it shouldn't.