> Almost but not quite: it must surely go to zero at some point, because chances are extremely high that we haven't accidentally hit the holy grail of digital cryptocurrencies and no better thing could ever be possibly come along for all eternity.
Bitcoin mathematically approximates Byzantine concensus with arbitrary parcitipants. This is the fundamental insight over the fundamental hurdle that made all prior attempts at cryptocurrencies (for decades) non-starters.
What is the space of cryptocurrencies that exploit the Byzantine insight, but are somehow better than Bitcoin? I would suspect that it is very small, or nil.
So unlike you, I don't think there is a high chance of something better coming along. I think there is a low but significant chance.
A slight digression:
I _do_ think that bitcoin may end up being the "gold" used to resolve balances between crypto-banks that have their own currencies. The advantage of such a system is confirmation in almost no time, and not having to pay a transaction fee to get your transaction into a block (which could be large as contention for block space rises).
But other cryptocurrencies backed by bitcoin will have to be redeemable for bitcoin, always. If you sever the link, they become worthless.
Now if they increase the block size limit to keep transaction fees low, there may never be any need for other cryptocurrencies backed by bitcoin.
Bitcoin mathematically approximates Byzantine concensus with arbitrary parcitipants. This is the fundamental insight over the fundamental hurdle that made all prior attempts at cryptocurrencies (for decades) non-starters.
What is the space of cryptocurrencies that exploit the Byzantine insight, but are somehow better than Bitcoin? I would suspect that it is very small, or nil.
So unlike you, I don't think there is a high chance of something better coming along. I think there is a low but significant chance.
A slight digression:
I _do_ think that bitcoin may end up being the "gold" used to resolve balances between crypto-banks that have their own currencies. The advantage of such a system is confirmation in almost no time, and not having to pay a transaction fee to get your transaction into a block (which could be large as contention for block space rises).
But other cryptocurrencies backed by bitcoin will have to be redeemable for bitcoin, always. If you sever the link, they become worthless.
Now if they increase the block size limit to keep transaction fees low, there may never be any need for other cryptocurrencies backed by bitcoin.