All of this is quite technical, caustic and full of assumptions that do not have to happen.

For example, there's an implied foregone conclusion that BTC's price is going much, much higher before "being taken over". This is a total fallcy. There's absolutely no reason or even indication price of BTC is going much higher... if higher at all. BTC is a side-show of the present world economy that has no significance or importance at all to the financial powers of the world that quickly dismiss it because, no matter what kind of extrapolations are made, even the totally wild one, BTC will only represent, in best case scenarios, an extremely minimal (insignificant, really), part of that financial system.

Doomsday scenarios for the world economy notwithstanding, which I will not even enter, from a working perspective I see a very imminent threat to the "BTC system" that, in my layman's opinion, forecast it's possible doom WITHIN THE YEAR. And here, probably, I lack a lot of answers that I would like explained, of course.

Here's the conundrum: The new tech, 20nm-based mining rigs will be fully delivered, en masse,  by Summer thus making the block chain more efficient than ever and the rewards more spread than ever... to the point that, using any calculator and assuming a level of increased difficulty of 50% a month, it will not be cost effective to mine for anyone (the new rigs will never make roi, and they will lose money after costs from day one). Therefore, when difficulty reached 30 million roughly by September, who will pay the pied piper? who will do the mining? who will maintain the block chain itself? Oh the answer that more efficient/cheap machines will come out is simply absurd because they will not be -even if technology would allow it- cost effective to manufacture.

Furthermore, there's no guarantee not even a reason for the BTC price to go higher. As a matter of fact, as we have seen the effect of recent developments, reasons abound to justify the price to remain stagnant or go significantly lower. Even before the Gox/Bitstamp debacle, the price had stayed barely above the level of the previous (China) debacle, for almost 3 months at or closely around $800 per BTC, so it is pretty safe to assume that price of BTC itself in the market will not influence any of that scenario that is pretty imminent.

Food for thought?