In my opinion btc will exists as long as 2 parties are interested to trade it.
I believe btc will never be bigger than is today. Why that? Because is not in goverments best interest to promote and sustain a thing they can't control.
Is very simple to do the math of how much time bitcoin will live and how much will a bitcoin worth in the future.
The next big step for bitcoin implementation will be government adoption but this is not likely to ever happen. Why? Is it simple!
Bitcoin can never replace real money!
Why a goverment will give up of real money that they can produce at any time in any quantity for a limited hard to get virtual thing owned by privates 100% internet dependent? And to get this thing from privates the goverment has to pay what? Real money of course!
Bitcoin is artifically hold up. If you are here to speak for real each 24 hours between 200.000 and 350.000 transactions are registered on blockchain. This mean at least 150.000 unique people but no more than 700.000 unique people are involved in btc transactions once at 24 hours.
The number of people that transact btc in 24 H is way much smaller than the people using real money comparing even to the poorest country in the world.
For something with a value given based on its amounts of trades this is a bad thing!
Another bad thing about bitcoin is the fee. Most of the bitcoin transactions daily are under $10000. Today 31/10/2017 to send $10 in btc you have to pay $3.5 transfer fee for a proper transfer confirmation time.
Another bad thing about btc is it's limited amount! Why? Simple! Big players can sequestrate the market and play to much with the price. Something like that happen's nowdays. I see everywhere advices to hold the coins!
Why to do that? To help big players control more of the market? You are not making any money unless you know for sure when big drops will happen. this affect badly the most of small traders when a price drop bigger than $1000 happens.
Let's assume this:
A big player win/win scenario:
1. Buy 10.000 coins at $5000 and hold until $8000
2. Sell 5000 coins at $8000
3. Finally he got like 80% of the money back and still have 5000 coins.
4. Price drop again because big player made a lot of coins available for sale in the market.
5. Remaining 5000 coins can be hold until $2000 per coin and the big player is still even.
A small trader win or loss scenario:
1. Buy 2 coins at $5000 and hold until $10.000 (as they expect at least double payout)
2. Price get to $8000. Will not sell waiting for $10.000.
3. Big player will sell at $8000
4. Finally small trader is very lucky if he gets his money back. Of course it can wait for another price rise but big player loop is going on and they always try to break the price boundaries.
As far I can see the prices fast rise and drop happens systematically!
Asia and Russia had already announced state run crypto currency. This is a good thing for the moment even for bitcoin because more people will become familiarized with crypto but step by step bitcoin will be replaced by state run crypto all over the world.
Since 51% of the btc transactions happens in asia once the crypto asean is out we can easilly say bye bye to btc.
Why I strongly believe the state run currencyes will be more successfully than btc? Simple. Low fees of transaction. More legal and secure ways of transaction. Fast way of transaction. availability. 100% gov backed currency! Everybody trust and love gov backed currency! If is not so then why everybody ask gov issued money for their coins? They should ask cows as payment!
What will happen if 5 mil btc coins will become available on market? I believe the price will be again $1 / btc
