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Who cares what it's "meant" to be?

You must be pretty behind the times. Most shops have stopped accepting bitcoin because of volatility and high transaction fees. Bitcoin thrives as virtual gold precisely because those two downsides make it useless as a currency.

That's the primary reason the Bitcoin Core / Bitcoin Cash split 2 years ago now was a difference in opinion about whether or not usage as a payment method mattered. Now you have two competing camps one is pushing the Bitcoin as egold and high fees while the other is pushing Bitcoin as a means of exchange with low fees.

The volatility was solved by the payment processors. In any case the big payment processors support both now. The higher than credit card fees though did kill the use of Bitcoin Core as a payment method in ordinary transactions.

Bitcoin was invented as a way to protect individuals from governments devaluing fiat currency. Payments have always been secondary to this goal. Read Satoshi's white paper.