Also I really don’t appreciate your passive aggressive way of calling me a liar

They're not wrong to do so when most of your points are outdated or crap:

the overhead for making the transaction is just a non-starter

Outdated

if the power goes out, your wallet goes with it

Bullshit

For a decentralized currency, people sure do love centralizing under large exchanges, and the massive losses, thefts, fraud, etc. have shown that no matter how “decentralized” it’s supposed to be, it’s still susceptible to the same bullshit as any other currency

Privacy coins are the best way to live the dream of fungible secure currency, which is why they're being suppressed. All the others are an experiment in how to monitor transactions more deeply.

Its high profile association with grifters, scammers, malware, and dark web shenanigans has completely soured its image in the public mind

If I may don a tin foil hat, likely left rampant by design. The proof of concept has been done, the tech works and has been in the hands of the public long enough that it's normalized. This may be to pave the way for countries to replace their currency with "legit" crypto versions in the next decade or two, which requires putting a bullet in the head of the rest.

It’s entirely a speculative investment scam now.

If you talk in absolutes you're destined to be wrong.

The issue with retail is how long it takes for a bitcoin transaction to be confirmed. The overhead simply isn’t feasible. A vendor isn’t going to sit around an wait an hour for confirmation that payment has been received.

Outdated.

And yes, let me be perfectly clear: I absolutely do want cryptocurrency to fail. That’s not about being a shill for government hegemony. It’s about there being literally no inherent good in it, either in principle or in practice. From the fact that it consumes more energy than entire countries and pumps more CO2 into the atmosphere than entire major industries, to the environmental impact of increased mining for rare earths, increased manufacturing strain, and supply chain disruption due to the demand for the chips to drive the miners.

At some point PoW will probably die a death and PoS will be all that remains. PoS is cheap.