Define success. Are cigarettes successful for their manufacturers? Yes, absolutely,they are swimming in money. Is it a success to other stakeholders? No, it's not. Bitcoin is a huge success to the speculators riding the wave or early adopters who held it long enough. If smaller groups benefit from it, that doesn't necessarily mean it is universally successful.
This is like arguing the iPhone was not a "success" because walled garden appstores are bad, or because app addiction is bad. Either of those may be true, but the iPhone was still a sucess.
Bitcoin was a daring experiment in game theory, open-source protocol, and human incentives, and is a success by any common-sense measures:
