The biggest thing holding back bitcoin was its inflated charges in fees per block just to get things pushed and pushed quickly.
There was great speculation that bitcoin cash and other cryptos where artifically inflating the transactions making everyone pay higher in order to make their coin look better. (I honestly believe this was in fact part of the issue)
In the screenshot below we can see transaction fees are headed towards a more nominal fee of about $2.75 to be within the first 1-3 blocks and $1.70 for 6 blocks out (a hour)
While these fees are still on the high side for small transactions it does show a move in the right direction.
Early January of this year we where looking at transaction feeds of $20 +
