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All this is what I find most fascinating about the space. The emergent reality of what happens and why it happens, how the various actors exert various kinds of force. That perspective is why I attribute such significance to these unfoldings of seemingly soft influence on an ostensibly hard technical project; and why I feel like exerting force here, in service of sensible things happening, and to enculturate useful ways of interacting, is worth doing, and more important than it seems.
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You bring up an interesting point because if you ask me who I would want to be at the center of steering bitcoin, it seems like a vanishingly small set of people.
Someone with the technical chops to be realistic about what bitcoin can and can't do, and not just "dream big" in fanciful but unproductive ways. Thus, someone from the development community or at least adjacent to it.
But at the same time, someone with a sophisticated understanding of bitcoin's role in the world, including the risks and attack vectors presented by nation states and other economic/political actors. Thus someone from the political or economic community.
And again, at the same time, someone with a conservative, libertarian approach to things that doesn't try to solve every problem with either a technical or political solution, someone willing to let the market decide as a general first principle.
The cross section of all three of these seems like an incredibly small set.
Ultimately though, regardless of my or anyone else's opinions, bitcoin's fate is going to be determined by a free-for-all of potentially disparate interests, as with pretty much anything. It's just the nature of social consensus.