Why bitcoin still matters.
There are a lot of very vocal supporters on both sides of the scaling debate and some trolls. What I have come to realize is that the bitcoin core developers are not politicians. They don't work for some company called "Bitcoin". Most of the developers of bitcoin are programmers, not businessmen however these people have the vision to develop a system that will scale and replace banks. All based on a set of open standards and something called lightning networks.
No one controls bitcoin, bitcoin has no advertising budget, and bitcoin has no marketing team. Therefore, it is easy for others to bash bitcoin.
Bitcoin is unique in that it is a network protocol and not a company. Satoshi was smart enough to walk away and that gave bitcoin a unique characteristic. That characteristic is that it is independent of any company, person or underlying belief system. It can't easily be targeted, changes must be made by consensus.
Network protocols (blockchains) should not be "owned" by anyone. Companies like Bitcoin.com that advocate for their own "brand" as demonstrated by Roger Ver's actions should be held as highly questionable.
There are no alt-coins that can make that same claim. They each have a website, company and lead developer(s). If they get hit by a bus tomorrow or a government intervenes the price of the underlying asset will fall significantly. Bitcoin does not have this issue or risk.
Bitcoin has the most underlying security through proof of work. This is important if one is to build a global financial network independent of big banks. With bitcoin there is no figure-head to target and no central point of control.
Alt-coins are all financially incentivized to see bitcoin fail, this is why there is a lot of bad feedback against bitcoin. Many of these companies stand to make billions if bitcoin fails. Don't make the mistake of believing that bitcoin will fail, it's the honey badger of money and it doesn't care what you think.