That world wasn't necessarily impossible. Imagine that the US reconceived the dollar as a coin, and everybody simply accepted it as a replacement currency. Potentially, a very large bank or credit card company could have done that with a stablecoin pegged to the dollar.
But that's not what happened. Bitcoin was never adopted as a currency so there was no way to anchor its value. Infinite shitcoins popped up, making cryptocurrency as a whole the most inflationary system in the universe (because anybody can mint their own coins). The whitepaper never considered that possibility.
It's still possible that the US government could decide to start taking BTC for payment of taxes, at some fixed exchange rate. That would anchor the price of BTC, and the whitepaper ethos could find a foothold.
That world has always been a hallucination at best and a cruel deception at worst, but it's never been possible and never will be.
> Bitcoin was never adopted as a currency
It was and it is, it's not a central bank currency but the promise of BTC is the opposite of that. BTC is officially tradable in the US, you can exchange it for dollars to pay your taxes.
> so there was no way to anchor its value.
The promise of BTC has never been "anchored value"... it's always been a "to the moon" scam.
> It's still possible that the US government could... anchor the price of BTC, the whitepaper ethos could find a foothold.
That cannot happen without invalidating everything written in the white paper, in other words that wouldn't be Bitcoin anymore and nothing like that could function in the current financial system.
Basically the premise is that you need to get in early or you're screwed forever. So what do you do? You create an asset where you are the one who gets to be first this time and gets to screw over others.