So what .. it happens all the time .. devs start working to solve an inferior problem and they end up hitting a jackpot .. Google guys just wanted to make a page rank algo and they went to sell it to Yahoo ... You know the history .. same thing happened to Bitcoin .. Satoshi were targeting a simpler problem but due to their incredible insights in math , cryptography and coding ..they created GOLD ...
I hope you understand creating a GOLD replacement is a LOT HARDER problem than fiat replacement ! ..