There was a naivety in the understanding of the nature of money, in particular of the layers required, that the big blockers did not appreciate. The quick growth of on-chain merchants etc in the early days could be thought of as similar to a fast growing sunflower in summer, where as what Bitcoin needed and has become is the slow-growing oak tree. The fundamentals of governance, node decentralisation, etc needed to be established and it was a messy situation that brought these to the fore. Consumer payments are a small part of the fiat world, but because they are obvious in everyday life people assign disproportional to them. It is only a minor % of the world's fiat velocity that is in day-to-day merchant payments compared to international commodity trading, interbank dealing, t-bills etc at the "higher layers".

The nature of the messy situation during the blocksize war was absolutely essential to making Bitcoin anti-fragile and drawing a line in the sand. The outright aggression and unwillingness to relent was needed as Jonathan Beir wrote about, for if Bitcoin could not overcome a few dodgy Chinese miners and charlatans, how could it hope to take down "the creature".

The malice of Bitmain and covert asicboost can not be understated, and they would have said anything to have pushed for the hardfork.

There is no end to the political scheming and intrigue allegations. The idea that Bitcoin has been captured by central banks sits with a kind of vague conspiracy mindset that sees the slightest association with something (e.g. blackrock ETFs) as equal to full capture. I think the reality is messy and gray. Bitcoin is for everyone, the book Decrypting Money briefly mentions this: Bitcoin is a push and pull between three (or more) groups: Cypherpunks, Libertarians, and Speculators. As much as we may consider Blackrock as "the creature", that creature is also pumping bags and adding power to our own "creature". Monero and BCH only have one or another of those groups and so will always be a niche project that cannot survive.

Stablecoins are really the area to watch out for in terms of capture. One timeline could be that we hyper-stabelcoinize with synthetic USD before we go onto a Bitcoin standard. The interplay between stablecoins, T-Bills, and Bitcoin is worth exploring. Tether for example is a total enigma to me and it is not clear how that plays out.