I don't think Bittorrent faced anything like what Bitcoin has. It was never an existential threat to the debt-based system. I'm not throwing in the towel on Bitcoin yet, but the level of capture is grim. Core. The miners. Post Quantum upgrade is probably next. The consortium and the redteam are big upgrades to the capture machinery ... It's grim. As you say, the mission isn't Bitcoin. The mission is freedom money. If Bitcoin is captured beyond repair, we will have to learn from it and build a version that can stay decentralized and secure. The fact that we made it this far means we were very very close.