The Bitcoin team isn't focused on mass adoption, and maybe they never were. They're focused on something else - I don't know exactly what, something technical, some kind of engineering miracle.

There is no Bitcoin "Team", you most likely don't understand anything about Bitcoin after saying that.

The majority of influential devs working on Bitcoin want mass adoption as store of value not as a payment system.
Compare how slow and inconvenient it is to pay with physical gold and then how baseless and iffy the digital fiat transfers are and you'll see how big a gap there is to fill.