Snapchat could emulate enterprise-centric vaporizing-message firms such as Silent Circle and start charging for subscriptions, but that would probably kill the service; a multitude of free rivals would likely spring up, with the express purpose of stealing irate customers away.
So, the end-user ends up with two choices
Those new free services will still have a revenue problem. And, if one is better capitalized, then it may buy up it's rivals and have an even bigger revenue problem.
Everyone needs to eat. Servers need power. It costs money to run servers, pay for bandwidth, pay for facilities, and have employees. If a company has no revenue then it is going to fail eventually.
The program as a whole hasn't worked.
That is a false statement, also know as a flat out lie. The article doesn't claim that the whole program hasn't work, rahter the article in question stated that "Program A didn't do B" when "Program A was never designed to do B". Perhaps you should stick with the facts.
Bitcoin is an innovative payment network and a new kind of money.
How about reading their their FAQ where it specifically says Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency? You might learn something.
"Just think, with VLSI we can have 100 ENIACS on a chip!" -- Alan Perlis