Price IS a signal its a signal of how much speculative Wall Street and VC money feels Bitcoin is a better safe haven than the other options.

The game isn't over yet. It never is. There is no end state of victory. Besides that, think of strategic voting. People pick which fork to support not entirely based on technical merit, but because they dont want to lose their capital and so based on what they expect the majority to pick. Its self fulfilling, its network effects in contentious situations where decisions have real world consequences. Most people expected the established network to win, so they helped ot win, feedback loops and all that. It does not mean that 1) people preferred it technically, or 2) that merit won't win out eventually.