I think that might just be selection bias. For example, you rarely hear anything positive about the middle east. This is not because nothing positive happens there, but because news space/time is limited and conflicts are intrinsically more interresting.

Similarly, if you follow HN, Twitter and Reddit, you can only see a subset of the news and events happening. Because conflicts are more interresting, they are the only BTC news that gets pushed into your visibility.

Yes, what should be a conversation is now a dispute because of polarization tactics deployed. A lot of money has been spent because a lot of money is at stake. This often happens in a winner-takes-all scenario & that is the key difference between bitcoin & other open-source projects.