Regardless of what happens going forward, Bitcoin has been a huge success by basically any metric that would have been put together >2 years ago.
I don't think a lot of people who haven't been following the topic since the project was first put together really get how much larger and mainstream Bitcoin has become in such a short time with (relatively) so few hiccups compared to what seemed realistically possible when the experiment began.
Also, I think there are a lot of companies that are now considered integral to world economics who, if they had publicly and transparently traded from inception, would have fluctuated just as much in their beginning years.
I don't think a lot of people who haven't been following the topic since the project was first put together really get how much larger and mainstream Bitcoin has become in such a short time with (relatively) so few hiccups compared to what seemed realistically possible when the experiment began.
Also, I think there are a lot of companies that are now considered integral to world economics who, if they had publicly and transparently traded from inception, would have fluctuated just as much in their beginning years.