The trail of broken crypto startups serve as counter evidence. There were plenty of merchants initially dragged in by the appeal of cutting out at least Visa/Mastercard's cut, and in many cases governments too.
And then the consumer adoption wasn't there, and the prices for merchants were also too high, so many ripped them out again.
Maybe I am wrong, but it seemed like there were a lot of people talking about it and in it (same with NFT) and then it plummeted.
That’s why I kinda felt like AI is the same. The bubble is going to pop as we hit limitations on what this can actually do.
But I will also admit that some of this could be living within a tech bubble.
What you saw was probably some light astroturfing, backed by wave after wave of non-tech celebrity sponsors, and a pump-n-dump shill bidding scheme.