Man, that is the right question to ask. My best answer at this point is not very satisfying: I think it will creep forward in much the way it has done.

In the same way that a lot of btc talking heads point out that you can only fake out reality for so long -- e.g., that all the fiat shenanigans will eventually come due -- you can only be an asset of pure speculation for so long. Eventually btc will be priced for how useful it is to its people en masse [0]. The odd story about how someone or other is personally living on a btc standard, and the stories about how useful it is for women in Afghanastan to escape the horrors of the patriarchy are real use cases and it's cool to hear about them, but I haven't been convinced that the magnitude of such activity amounts to much right now.

But the exciting (to me) thing is that the speculation interest has driven real development and innovation. There are so many tools available, the ecosystem is flourishing, and more seems to be on the way. SN is one such -- SN is a quasi-news site, but what is also hiding in plain sight, is a really innovative experiment in media, incentives, and online community that couldn't realistically be done without btc. That is so cool! It is a genuine use case, a real contribution. Imagine more things like that, a flourishing undergrowth of them?

I'm planning to write this up sometime, but I think btc's growth and adoption is well represented as a "garbage can model" of innovation / systemic change. If you're interested, have a look at this paper [1]. Also note that I could be (and would be happy to be) wrong about this, so if this doesn't sound right to you, I'd love to hear about it.

[0] Yeah yeah, I know 'speculation is a use' but it's a fragile and brittle use. See e.g., GME et al.

[1] Cohen, M. D., March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1972). A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.2307/2392088