Bitcoin Forum

This isn't intended to be another spam thread, this is real analysis.

Eventually the world will adopt a crypto-currency. That's just where technology is headed and where we are evolving. It won't, however, be bitcoin. Bitcoin was a good experiment while it lasted, but through experimenting with it it's shown its weaknesses, weaknesses that other crypto's have already made headway in correcting, just without wide adoption.

Eventually, a new crypto that isn't currently in existence will be developed by a counsel of cryptographers and industry professionals from silicon valley but more importantly will also be directed by the advice of economists, not just computer scientists. This new crypto will be widely endorsed in silicon valley and will take the world by storm, eventually becoming the exclusive currency of most online retailers and will be known as the internet currency (as if the internet were its on country / economy). As surely as I write this, this will happen, and when it does, all other crypto's including bitcoin will become obsolete. Sure, they'll still be collected as vintage items for their sentimental value the way old NES games are still collected. But mining them will be easy enough that they'll have no real value.

Not 0 usd, but a few cents yea.

I agreee with you. When LTC, NVC, PCC and other clones go to the mtgox price for bitcoing will be going down down down...

keep on hammering away at that FUD, weren't you pondering buying back in at $160 earlier?

It isn't FUD, it's a genuine observation.

In the long run, YOU will be worth $0.

But that's a good thing -- you appear to be worth significantly less right now.

I guarantee I've made more $ speculating bitcoin that you have  ;D

plus one,

What do you mean in the long run ? He is already worthless and im really getting tired with this whole troll shit.... ;D

Betamax was a superior technology than VHS but it never took off

MASSIVE difference here.

$0.01 to $0.02 is a 100% rise, $0 to anything, even $0.01 is a percentage rise of infinite size.

OP is full of confidence eh?

In the long run we're all dead.

If the network of bitcoin is powerful enough, and the community is strong enough, how will you have involved in bitcoins would switch to another one?

If you insist in, why the price will drop to 0?

OP is sorta right in the same as saying the dollar will be worthless in the long run as it will be replaced at some point in time....

so yes... but that doesn't make bitcoin worthless now or anytime soon... "soon" is to be defined...

This. Believing Bitcoin will *always* be worth something is a fairy tale, just as much as believing it will be worth nothing tomorrow because of pressure from law enforcement.

The thing is, although the masses would perhaps prefer such an addition, a lot of us would rather stay away from a new coin peddled by mainstream economists and so on. Bitcoin is a the crytocurrency to be beaten, having better features and big backing does not always mean wider adoption so the Bitcoin brand will go a long way regardless. I do not believe there are any cryto currencies that offer more potential yet either.

.

Na, billions.
http://www.wiwo.de/images/3-akg/6659198/2-format23.jpg

Where exactly will the adopters of this new crypto currency be found? Your mom? Dad? The guy down the street? Your friendly neighborhood economist?

You can make a million digital currencies, but you need a small army of nerds to support, develop and cheer-lead that currency. Where would these people come from?

In the long run, everything will be worth $0.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe)

sounds like ripple.com already... and yet, it won't make bitcoin obsolete

OP sounds really credible.  ::)


So according to his own words, Nikola is actually a bull. :P

Theres no proof that theory is valid though, big bang is a myth. There are quasars with massive red shift in front of nearby galaxies.

Shit, my ignore list is getting so big that in the end this forum will be worth 0 for me...  :)

Tesla, you are right. But the ideological allure of a "crypto" currency, i.e.  the anarcho-libertarian wet dream of decentralization, is the one aspect that most assuredly won't be part of the digital currency that ultimately becomes successful. That's why so many folks are butthurt. Infrastructure is necessary and the deep pockets necessary to maintain it - the kind that can only come from state sponsorship of some sort or shape - is becoming more and more obvious. Without it Bitcoin remains a fringe speculation game with two-bit exchanges seasonally arising and dying and wild-west-style robberies remaining the norm. The only paradigm-shift I see coming from "crypto" currency, is that the state sponsorship needed to maintain viability and confidence in the currency may shift from that of the nation-state to a corporate entity. It will serve to make direct the dynamic that is, in effect, already in place.

Don't any of you find it ironic that the results of Bitcoin debacles (like Bitcoinica and others) has been for the victims to seek the courts' help for redress? Is that begging for oversight and regulation, or what?!



 

If a state or corporate sponsered currency does dominate that will be the globalist 'new world order' dream come true. I will resist that even more than the current fiat system. Those who run to the protection of the state at every turn need to wake up and fast.

Video2000(think that was the name) was even better. Still VHS is pretty much worthless now. Together with lazerdisks, minidisks and casettes.

If there is anything that working in the technology industry has taught me it's that successful technologies are rarely without huge design flaws or weaknesses. In fact, those flaws and weakness often foster an eco-system of early adopters and businesses that develop to services and products to "fix" things and this in itself has a powerful viral/network effect. For example, look at the Bitcoin services offered to merchants.

Don't get me wrong Bitcoin's future is far from certain and has a high chance of failure, but don't under-estimate the ingenuity of people to work around the problems we see today, especially when motivated by sizeable financial opportunities that simply don't exist in the alternatives right now.

There has never been a paper / fiat currency which didn't eventually fail. The average fiat lifespan is 30-50 years before it hyper-inflates and go bust. (exact average depends which source you believe - google it).

The US Dollar is overdue. And in the long term that will also be worth 0 whatever else (Yuan, Euro, Shells, BTC?)

So what exactly was OP's point here? Yeah - all currencies eventually go to 0. Civilizations come and go. Does it mean we should just abandon the whole concept of money and return to barter?

+1

it's all about adoption and what is a standard. I don't see the media talking about litecoin do ya?
Not always the best makes it to the most adopted.
I think bitcoin will have upgrades to make it lightweight and more efficient, hell I even think that a branch of bitcoin maybe something like bitcoinX/bitcoin 2.0 whatever you want to call it will take over and people will be able to transform their old bitcoins to the new version of the coins for free or something.

your right and your wrong.

not fud, but not observation....speculation. you dont know the future my friend. also it wont be a group of silicone valley brains but the gov or FEDERAL RESERV BANK. they are the most powerful entity in the world and they give the thumbs up or down on this type of currency. they do have the power to destroy this. IMO THEY will make one or have your boys in SV make it and then they will control it and they will be able to make more just like they do with paper money and they will have the largest holdings, also they will control the price. that is the ONLY way America would adopt a cryptocurency.

You do realize that Bitcoin is open software and any immaterial flaws can be rectified, right?  All that has to survive is the Bitcoin 'brand' and miners will do the rest. Thusly, Bitcoin can never go to 0 just some positive value above that line.

You lost my interest at exactly this point:


Nothing is "surely" about that, you're just stating your opinion, providing no real argument or supporting evidence whatsoever.

How about I provide some counterexamples:

 * VHS vs. Betamax. Betamax considered superior by many, never took off.

 * Facebook vs. Google+. Pretty much every tech person prefers Google+, but since Facebook is so established, nobody wants to leave it.

 * Laserdisc vs. [whatever was available at the time]. Great format, never really successful.

Summary: I'm not concluding that it is impossible that bitcoin will be superseded by a newer cryptocurrency, but it's far from certain, and you made it sounds exactly like that.

Just like Friendster is going to make a comeback and take out Facebook. ;)

Btw, do you work for Ripple?  (IMHO, also like Friendster in this analogy)

Why would somebody from Silicon Valley / Economist be better than the current developers of BTC/LTC/etc?
It's a good moment to destroy crypto currencies (not exchanges), lots of people looking at this.
Problem is, I still can see them hence they are worth much more than 0.

So, what's your real analysis based on?

How would the media even talk about litecoin? "Have you heard of the new up-and-coming electronic currency system, Litecoin? It is just like bitcoin, but with a different name and not as many people use it. If you don't know about bitcoin, here is how it works ..."

"..except it's an offshoot that uses a different method of mining than bitcoin (scrypt) that has it's own advantages and disadvantages."

Seems like a pretty sound explanation to me. Why wouldn't they just be able to say that?

masses would run over water to understand it :)

because nobody would be interested, talking about bubbles is much better

How are any of the bitcoin clones significantly better than bitcoin?

Most of them are exactly the same with a trivial change that is arguably better (or worse) than bitcoin. I don't see a single advantage to any altcoin over bitcoin.

click -> report to moderator

reason: ANNOYING

Of course something will supplant bitcoin. There will be situations for which we need monetary transactions for which we can't yet plan, since they don't exist. But there'll be need for a replacement crypto currency at some point, I think that's a given. Not any current alt coin, but something that fill a gap that may not exist for a couple of hundred years.

At that point there will be plenty of speculation about the new currency and people will trade btc for it - some going long and some going short.

I fail to see why this is a problem, or why the OP is troll.

There's 4 threads on the Spec forum by NikolaTesla, each one is FUD.

Just a few days ago he made a thread complaining about how people who get out spam the forum with FUD. Now I guess he sold his position at a bad spot.

I guess the more shit-slinging there is in the speculation forum, the more people are desperate to buy back in.

how many threads is this guy going to put if you know and speculate so much you must have a lot off money ha????(sarcastic)

Each one except for this one. Saying something is FUD doesn't make it so. I can't see how bitcoin wont be outgrown at some point.

Tesla I used to to like you.

Bitcoin got here first, it's designed to be uncrackable, and it is very very young. Alternatives are all just knock offs, and as such, I do not believe Bitcoin will die so easily. Unlike the VHS, Bitcoin scales.

Perhaps once the last bitcoin is mined we will have some issues, perhapes sooner, but I think you're wrong on this one. (Edit: I could say the U.S. is going to collapse one day and not be a country anymore and be 100% correct but does that mean everyone in the U.S. should abandoned ship?)

It could be $0 one day, but then again, it could be $10,000

Anyways I expect it to last at least 10 years at minimum, but who knows. Satoshi is still out there right? If he ever creates "Bitcoin 2.0" I'll jump the boat for the founder.

I can't believe the number of people who think that something made for today's technology and economic structure will last forever. I'm sure paper money was once thought to be impossible to do without.

In long run we all will die. And $ too.

Most likely bitcoin will reach $ XX,XXX before 0.

In the long run we are all dead. So yes, bitcoin will worth nothing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management)
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/07/risk_tolerance.asp (http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/07/risk_tolerance.asp)

The Bitcoin exchange rate is not zero at the time of this posting.  What are the threats that could push it to zero?  Each individual must assess their own risk tolerance and act accordingly.

Ignorance of or denying threats is not smart.

Ok one more to go to my ignore list :(

And I thought NikolaTesla was wise guy...

fuck dude you posted this in speculation and in newbie forums....where else!>!>!>????? ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!! OK FUCK THIS IM IGNORING YOUR FUD AND ABSOLUTE ANNOYING ASS!!!!!!!!


I like smoothie and proudhon WAY more than your bull shit.


edit: he took it down off the newbie section....cuz its not there and there would be a "moved to such and such location"

Indeed imho: F*** Y**

Bitcoin is TEH future <:

WTF NikolaTesla, a week or so you were going on and on about who everything was looking up up up. Days before that you were going on about how it is going down down down. I can't stand this schizophrenic lunacy. This does amount to little more than FUD if you flip flop so much.  ??? >:(

I love these sort of claims, because they can not be tested and proven wrong.

10 years from now, $50,000 per btc, NikolaTesla still right.  Bitcoin will go to $0 in the "long run", it just hasn't been long enough yet!

100 years from now, effective value of $50,000,000,000 per bitcoin (but USD long since dead), NikolaTesla still right.  It just hasn't been long enough yet!

There should be a rule about predictions on this sub-forum.  You either predict something testable that can eventually be proven wrong, or you lose your thread-making privileges.

Hail Mary

My point is that they cannot talk about it without also talking about bitcoin. The only way some other cryptocurrency will overtake bitcoins is if it brought something new, so you would not have to compare it to bitcoins. Why get a copy when you can just use the original?

True.dat


Why get silver when you can just get gold? Why get a Honda when you can just get a Ford? Why get a double-cheeseburger when you can get just a cheeseburger?

I take it by your generalizations that you either A) don't understand the differences between Bitcoin or Litecoin; or B) you understand them better than I, have come to the conclusion that they don't matter, but refuse to explain why in any sort of detail.

The same goes for gold or anything else that you can think of

This was largely because the porn industry adopted VHS. As with a lot of tech porn will lead the way.  So more BTC porn!

Oh and btw Bitcoin is still in beta actually and a lot can change so keep your pants on there troll master OP.

Gold is like 1500 $/ounce, silver is like 30 $/ounce, so if you want to buy in increments of a couple hundred dollars, then silver might be better for you. Until a satoshi is worth a significant amount there will be no need to make a cryptocurrency with a more granular unit than bitcoins.

If I drive a honda and you go out and buy a ford, it does not make the road any less useful to me. But if we each pick different cryptocurrencies, then they are all less useful because less people will accept them.

A double-cheeseburger adds benefits to the cheeseburger (more meat), and so people want it.

To me, the differences between bitcoin and litecoin seem superficial. They have a different number of total coins, but that just affects the exchange rate, you just divide by a different number when converting a price from USD to BTC/LTC. The blocks come faster, but you need to wait for more blocks to get the same confirmational surety, so you end up waiting just as long anyway. The difference in algorithm is no difference to me, since that is all under the hood so to speak, until one or the other is cracked they are the same to a user.

In the long run, we are all dead...

That's my impression too, no real benefit to litecoin over BTC propper. It's great to keep alternative networks and technologies alive though as redundancy. But I can see merchants and services wanting to standardize around one network eventually, and right now that looks to be bitcoin.

Same could be said of many currencies and tickers. The question is "when". We do live in an ever-changing world after all. So yes, this thread is textbook FUD because OP wants a cheaper buy-in after having sold at 135.

This guy flip flops more than Mitt Romney!  Amirite?

hahaha love this!!

minidisks were way better than CD's. i wish that technology would have beat Compact Disks, then i wouldnt have so many scratched CDs.  But any type of cryptocurrency officially released by the govt/banks will be so regulated and taxed that people will realize the benefits of bitcoin.

OP ignored.

I confirm that. But when - that's the question! Useless clones are made specially for killing bitcoin. So, if we will not use them, they  just disappear without any harm to bitcoin. Dont use new alt coins!
P.S. Someone has invested too much of money into BTC to lose them. And he/they will not give up without fight.

I totally agree. I initially had some apprehensions about bitcoin because of it's potential flaws and the endless possibilities for creating new currencies. But, the community around bitcoin has significant investments into it, and any flaws with real threats to bitcoins existence will be addressed quickly by all the miners and developers who have a vested interest.

Anyone creating an alternative currency will have their own vested interest. If it's the government, it will work in favor for the government. If it's a business or individual, it will work in favor for them. So what motive does anyone have to adopt them vs bitcoin?

If it's someone truly altruistic who just wants to make the world's fairest alt. coin, he will have a hard time finding supporters and in particular evangelists where there is nothing in it for them.

How would that be, given that mining becomes more and more difficult over time by design?

less ppl mining = difficulty drops

Really?

Could record your shows longer? No.
Devices were cheaper? No.
Had more shows to watch? No.

Guess the only thing going for it was a few extra lines of resolution... Hmm.

4-6 hour TV recording won that battle with the common user.

If its easy to use and adopt,
If it is accepted "everywhere" for trade,
and if it serves a common need to the majority of prospective adopters.

Then it wins.

As far as bitcoin vs litecoin speculative value just remember that the customers adopters perspective becomes the reality.

But litecoin *isn't* better.  It's faster, but in this case it's not better.  It's also going to have more coins, which devalues each one, and it was only created because someone missed the gravy train of early bitcoin mining and they wanted to try to get rich.

At least namecoin had another intended purpose that was interesting in concept.

Bitcoin will become obsolete once there is a cryptocurrency which does exhibit the following properties:

• the possibility for split-second confirmed transactions
• logarithmic growth of storage space and network bandwidth for transaction data (Bitcoin is linear to exponential)
• a significant fraction of computation consists of useful work

I know the former two can be solved, only the latter one would require some new innovation.

By the time this is even possible bitcoin will be a mainstream currency. At that point there will be no reason to switch over.

too big to fail?
famous last words.

The demand for these innovations will not simply go away. Even in a scenario where Bitcoin were to have absolute majority such a significant innovation will consume it.

Over time, as competing currencies show their worth, you can gradually acquire the new currencies using your BTC holdings, which by that time, may be worth several thousand US$ each.

That would imply somebody would actually prefer BTC to a superior competitor.

There's nothing "real" about this analysis.

You're assuming that BTC's are the first virtual currency.

They are not.

Any open source program based on the features of Bitcoins will most likely be seen as another clone; no reason to give that clone any time of day due to the existing network effect of Bitcoins.

Any non-open source program will be shunned by those who understand the underlying value of Bitcoins.

The market cap of bitcoin is over a billion dollars and that number will continue to rise. It will be almost impossible for anything to catch up to that unless there is something really special about it. Even then it won't deter most bitcoin users.

I would think it more likely that Bitcoin evolves little by little, instead of being entirely replaced by an alt. coin.

That isn't really a coherent chain of arguments.


Hopefully.
But some important innovations are architecture dependent and can not be done. It is at this point where Bitcoin is going to be replaced.

Maybe I should have qualified that with "and there is a limited supply by design". At this point in the game, I can't foresee us reaching a point where there would be a significant number of coins left over that would be "easy enough" to mine, regardless of the dip in value. With the impending number of people with ASIC hardware, at a relatively small electricity cost, they will be able to mine the vast majority of the remaining bitcoins by 2033. As improvements happen with ASICs, maybe the price comes down on them, or maybe they maintain a premium cost but with increasing hashrates and lower power requirements.  It just seems more likely that there would be a select set of enthusiasts doing the mining for the long term and it wouldn't ever be "inexpensive" for just anyone to jump in and mine a significant number of coins for themselves.  Of course, I could be wrong.

Seeing that we have ASICS up and running, the difficulty is never going to get back down to CPU profitable levels. There are bitcoin enthusiasts who will mine at a loss just to keep the network going. But if bitcoin prices go way down and usage drops, you will be able to pick up a used ASIC for pretty cheap, and so mining could turn out to be cheap after all. The other (IMHO, more probable) extreme is that prices and usage go up, and so mining will continue to be expensive, always trending toward zero profit.

Remember, the miners get to keep the transaction fees, so in the future even after all the bitcoins are minted there will still be some reward for miners. But transaction fees are dependent on usage, so if nobody is using bitcoins then mining will have no reward.

Actually, it was porn.

Porn industry standardized on VHS, regular movie industry followed, everybody bought a VHS, nobody wanted two machines, Beta lost.

But, yeah, IIRC, the longer record time was the seller for why porn picked it.

Are there any projections out there as far as when transaction fees will make up a greater share of the mining profits than the remaining bitcoins?

Nothing accurate.  It depends on any change to how many transactions will fit into a block - which is an ongoing debate.

Well, we can guess, based on current info. What is the average fee payout right now?

Please elaborate; I thought anything can be changed through a hard fork and which ever version has majority support wins out.

So I would think we'll start to see minor hard forks and each time it won't seem that big of a deal, but 10 years later you'll look back and think "holy crap bitcoin has changed a lot"

For example if I though that i had a much better idea for an alt. currency.  I'd say that it would be better for me to make a private road map of how to make bitcoin into my new currency, and make small incremental pull requests over a long time period until i'd managed to change bitcoin into the better currency that i had envisioned; as opposed to trying to start my currency from scratch with zero public support.

Of course you might complain "But my pull requests or forks might get rejected"...well maybe that means that other people don't think that your ideas are better than the status quo, and starting your own alt. currency is only a way to postpone that realization.  Unless of course you think the current devs are holding bitcoin back by rejecting your code, in which case you take your case to the message boards, if there is popular support for your modifications I'm sure the  devs would be persuaded to include the code updates.

Or some othr network evolves on top of bitcoin network which will enable faster transactions etc.

one problem with your position is that there is more $$$ and expertise already in BTC development than anywhere else, and it would be hard to buy.organise this at any price.

If any other currency looks too successful, the BTC's will just fork to take that on board. So BTC may evolved to be the best coin, by virtue of its front runner position.

Exactly...suppose Litcoin is becoming very popular most due to the 2.5minute confirmations....so bitcoin just updates their confirmations to 2.5minute or 1minute (and divides the rewards and blocksize accordingly)...boom..litcoin is pointless overnight.

Yes very much can be changed with a hard-fork, but only up to a point.

Currently even something very minor from a software architecture standpoint like the block size limit, which is just a variable when it comes down to it generates massive controversy, and as we have seen bugs.
So I don't think that major changes are going to make it through.

The examples I posted above are things which could be much more easily implemented by starting from scratch. It's not entirely impossible to do this with a hard-fork but you also have to see this from the innovators perspective: Why try to convince the Bitcoin core team, and try to work with an old code-base instead of starting a own project, especially since the reward from doing so is so much higher?
In software development it only makes sense to do a new project once the amount of changes exceed a certain amount. This has been done over and over again and I can't see how cryptocurrencies would be any exception.
See Netscape/Firefox/Chrome, Apache/nginx, Gnu/*BSD.
If changes are sufficiently numerous people will create another software and this has nothing to do if it requires a hard-fork or not, it simply makes more sense.

And this is where shit goes horribly wrong, again...

Keep spreading FUD, sell your coins quickly please while you can, bitcoin can be $0 within a day when people have read your post!
I'll take them.

Oh, and don't forget to buy litecoin, they solved all of bitcoins problems and will take over bitcoin soon!

This is trivial, but in the long run every currency ever to have existed will be worth $0 or infinite dollars, depending on whether USD or the currency in question dies first.

By the way, this is a funny thought but once mankind disappears does money (including BTC) cease to exist?  conversely, do any current or future species outside of humans have the potential to understand the concept of money?

Heh, good point.

Yes, I think any species that develops trade will develop a unit of trade, that is, money.

I'm sure that there exists some non-human species that can barter right now.  Wonder if any animal experts know if any species outside humans know how to use an arbitrary and agreed upon method of value store today.  probably not, but perhaps some analogies can be made..  Eg. cartoons of squirrels exchanging nuts :)

and you have just identified the other half of why altcoin are popular, apart from the get rich quick motivation is the knowledge that BTC may not be it....!

Here's where your argument breaks down (in my opinion):

You seem to think that the Bitcoin vs. [as of yet unknown altcoin] situation can be compared to the browser history. Major innovations by a newcomer in this field more than once caused the previous market leader to lose its established position (Netscape replaced by IE, IE by Firefox, Firefox by Chrome).

However I hold that the *coin situation is more similar to the history of social networks. A major innovator, with sufficient momentum generated by word of mouth, can sometimes replace the previous market leader -- say, when Facebook destroyed Myspace's entire business model. But innovation and word of mouth do not guarantee success in this field: upon release, Google+ had huge momentum, the whole might of the world's largest Internet company behind them, and was/is arguably a much more pleasant experience than Facebook. Yet, they completely tanked in their effort to even approach the position of Facebook.

The difference is previous investment in the product. Browsers require very little of it (just install a new one), social networks a lot (all your friends are on it, you'd have to convince them to follow you). Now please be honest: in terms of investment, which of the two does a cryptocurrency resemble more?

(caveat: I admit, there's always the possibility to shift your investment from one currency to another, and this is maybe somewhat easier than shifting "investements" in a social network. However, even with the option of trading currencies, this process is not frictionless, and will therefore be a serious barrier for any competitor)

Chimps trade food for sex. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090407-chimps-meat-sex.html
I don't know if any species actually trades in stored value, though.

Think of it this way.
Budweiser- Highest selling beers of all time in the United States. Highly marketed, accepted by many as "good" beer. One of the first in the states. Is it the best, not by a long shot. Is it even good, no. Is there other beers out there that should have taken its place as "the king of beers" absolutely. Fact is, it was first, it was widely consumed, highly publicized, rose to the top and stayed there because of its wide acceptance, its mass appeal, and its basic "trust" in the brand.

Bitcoin will be a lot like Budweiser. It was first, widely adopted, mass media attention, commonly used. Will their be better, sure. Does that mean they will be worth more, maybe. Does it mean Bitcoin will be worth less, maybe not. Does it mean bitcoin will still be the most commonly used because of peoples perception of the brand, absolutely.

*Yes this is probably one of the most ridiculous analogies ever used to describe the future of Bitcoin, however it is just a speculative and credible as any other analogy on this site because no one will ever no the future of Bitcoin or any form of crypto currency and that is the truth. So speculate away, but I say this; Make whatever fiat currency you need now, but make sure you've got a few BTC coins stashed away so that when/if they become what many hope they will become you're not standing at the top of some building contemplating jumping 50 stories to your death because you had 100 bitcoins at $3, sold them for $100 and now can barely get your hands on a satoshi.*

You answered it already, kind of.
Once the amount of "friction" is overcome people will switch to an improved system.

But that is also not the whole factor: Facebook took over myspace not only because it took over it's consumerbase. It started from it's own consumerbase which wasn't a subset of myspace, other people who didn't previously use social networking started to use it and only after it became larger than myspace people started the switch.
This is also why the current "alt chains" aren't a real competition to bitcoin they are essentially part of it. Real competition can only come from outside the project, on a new codebase and from a new group of people as early adopters.  I don't even think that such a new cryptocurrency would call itself a "coin" or compare itself with bitcoin for that matter.
It being competitive with bitcoin would most likely be only be apparent after the fact.

If the new cryptocurrency will keep all the benefits and advantages of bitcoin then maybe yes. But I am afraid that some point are incompatible. (How would split-second confirmations guarantee safety against double-spending? How would logarithmic growth of storage space motivate miners to compete for it? Who will set and influence what is "useful work"?)

If I had an answer to these questions I would probably try to implement it rather than posting here.

I thought of something along the line of different difficulty targets at once, ie a transaction gets one split second confirmation first, then in the order of seconds, then minutes, hours, days...
Storage space has not really something to do with mining, immediately I thought about leaving out the "full node" concept altogether, nodes depending on other nodes to confirm transactions, mine multiple smaller tranactions into larger ones, and so on, there probably is a much more elegant solution though.
As for the useful work part, that is something very difficult, I don't really have an idea of how to tackle it, one approach would be to use things like FFT for hashing and use the currency to buy computation power. Miners engaging in some sort of contest instead/in addition to hashing based proof of work, etc... This is very much hazy.

This part I completely agree with. Something totally *different* from Bitcoin (only, it'll turn out to be not that different after all) could effectively replace it. I just caution not to make it sound like that happening to be a certainty (in the first decade or so after widespread adoption of Bitcoin). Could happen, sure. Doesn't have to, though, and I think those smart enough will see it coming in time to get out of Bitcoin.

while another competitor could arise it would take time for it to become competition, everyday that bitcoin lives is another day people trust it more

I honestly trust bitcoin more than banks or anything else mainly for the fact that I control the value of my wealth on paper, im well diversified in assets only and have only safety money in the bank and it would take serious trust for me to move my assets somewhere else

BTC is pretty safe from the time length it has been out (as an investment and store of wealth) and it has made many of those who have believed in it from the getco richer than imagined,

BTC was also someones baby, prior to it being released to the world it was well thought and perfected, look how far it has come, Seriously this is just the beginning

as someone who holds a big number of coins ill also say that it being worth 0 is going to take a long time to happen frankly because it would take me forever to liquidate my coins and there are those who have more than I do so they are in the same boat, not only that people who are wealthier than I want hordes of bitcoin and they cant have it, now why would I want to ditch something when someone who is richer than me wants it?

If competition or some alt coin can come up with a just as secure public database or public ledger, with the not so big size the block chain requires, that might possibly take over as the internet currency.

You have to beat the core features of bitcoin, mainly the double-spend issue, and it's protected by strong crypto.

on a related note (http://www.zmescience.com/research/how-scientists-tught-monkeys-the-concept-of-money-not-long-after-the-first-prostitute-monkey-appeared/), they can be taught to do so, and they still trade it for sex. :D

I haven't read through the whole discussion here but let me just say this regarding new cryptocurrencies:

Trust in these doesn't come overnight. Bitcoin has been in development for about four years now.

When anything better comes along, people will not immediately jump all over it just as people still haven't jumped all over Bitcoins (Paypal is still way more popular for example). For many years it will simply trade against Bitcoins and slowly rise in valuation until it finally takes over. (And the early adopters will once again get filthy rich. That's because most cryptocurrencies never work out.)

So whether Bitcoins or another cryptocurrency "wins" in the long run doesn't really matter. Right now Bitcoins has all the momentum, for several very good reasons.

You can make the argument that the introduction of ASICs to BTC makes DIY mining much more difficult and that Scrypt as a technology is a very real competition to BTC. Any gamer with a PC can generate LTC/FTC but you need specialized hardware ATM to mine BTC, so newer users will likely start with some kind of scrypt based coin before moving onto BTC.

The reason all SHA based alts have not been a real competitor is that the specialized hardware used for btc can also be used for those alt coins making adoption very difficult.

New users of bitcoins start by buying some, not by building a mining rig.

The first thing that everyone I've introduced BTC does is go online and start mining.

Hell, I sold mining rigs before I was able to sell people on buying the actual currency.

I think you are generalizing your experience way too much.

In the long run, we're all dead.