Cynically this could just be seen as people trying to shoot down bitcoin without wanting to say that they dont like the technology. Blockchain technology offers advantages over current methods/technology in many fields and saying its dumb would likely hurt their reputation.
Bitcoin has a long way to run until it hits mainstream adoption and its not exactly hard to make comparisons to the tech boom in the 90s when internet businesses were springing up all over the place. Internet is like blockchain, you cant shoot it down, but bitcoin is compared to any startup that was there and it may not make it (though I personally do not see that happening).
I've previously posted about my take on the value of bitcoin -
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2959222.msg30381912#msg30381912 Blockchain can continue to live without bitcoin, but that does not mean that bitcoin will die.
Firstly, thank you for picking this up (before it was pushed off the cliff by questions like "Can bitcoinz help me fly?").
I agree that the technology that created Bitcoin will always outlast Bitcoin. However, I still think that for every person who buys into blockchain either academically or industrially, a subset of those people and their associates will also buy Bitcoin.
In the 10th century anybody in the jewelry industry would probably have had a little gold in their personal trinket box.
