This article is another indication. The author understands neither the technical details of the blockchain (he believes transfers happen instantly without any fees) nor the economics.
From an economic perspective, the more ransomware there is, the more the demand curve for Bitcoin shifts right. In that respect, Bitcoin is a vehicle to bet on the growth of black markets.
The article was written on May 29, 2011. The average transaction fee in that month was .02 BTC. The average block time was 10 minutes. Neither of your claims is true.
Bitcoin has been doing amazingly well. I definitely regret not investing, and I justified it due to the threat of competing cryptocurriencies, specifically ones that a government or company backs.
I was skeptical that if a country creates their CountryCoin (AmeriCoin/AmericaCoin, RussiaCoin, ChinaCoin), wouldn't it effectively cause bitcoin itself to go in freefall as people would convert to the coin backed/sanctioned by a government.
Likewise, Apple can create iCoin. For those reasons I was skeptical.
Looks like it doesn't really matter as long as you get off the ride before it starts to stop.
Andreas Antonopoulos made a good point that a "countrycoin" would always have a trusted key held by the country's monetary issuing authority which would basically then provide an enormous honeypot to tempt attackers to target it/steal it. OTOH, currencies like bitcoin with fixed monetary policy don't have a backdoor mechanism for money creation (without overwhelming consensus to fork).
Also, I see Political intervention in currency as a bug rather than a feature.
Such discussion can be indicative of a bubble approaching maximum capacity.