As for where the vanilla bitcoin goes from here, it seems locked into its destiny as a replacement for gold, not dollars and euros.
Bitcoin may have failed in its original mission, but its greatest victory may be to open the door for other, more-scalable cryptocurrencies. Harnessing the power of the blockchain, projects like Ethereum, which have fewer of the limits imposed by Nakamoto on their own creation, have the potential to spread much wider. Perhaps in a few decades, people will be saving for their digital pensions with bitcoin but buying their groceries with Ethereum.
Eulogy made by Daniel Cooper