The problem is real though. We must reckon with the possibility that all these anarcho-capitalist dreams will go to hell once the necessary minimum overhead of handling crypto turns it into an _even more centralized_ medium of exchange.

Second of all, there are many many cryptocurrencies at this point and they are all thriving/competing with one another across various measures. Since fiat is incapable of competing with anything except on relative value, fiat is doomed to fail.

Sure, fiat currencies can hyperinflate with less than 15 years’ notice, but 15 years from now I expect most fiat currencies will be similarly valued and most cryptocurrencies to be as gone and forgotten as a geocities homepage.

You think bitcoin will be gone in 15 years? It's already been around for ~10 years and it's just starting to reach mass awareness. If it survived ~10 years in relative obscurity, please explain how it's going to be be gone in 15 years now that it's well known?

I don't know if it will be gone but something's got to give at this rate.

So if bitcoin's competition is Gold (and not your local currency) it would need to get a lot easier for laymen to acquire and sell (I'm not just talking bay area engs, I mean like the Venezuelan farmers, which is why bitcoin enthusiasts trump up any and all reports of the like). The segwit x2 fork was at least an attempt at that, and coinbase has done good work reducing frictions. The 2nd and 3rd will take years but could happen.

I just feel like at this point all of bitcoins gains in the past year have been driven by wild speculators looking to make a quick buck, which tells me that when the recession hits they will dump their holding and btc will tank. This will make people less confident in btc as a store of value, and will consider it instead to be a wildly risky investment vehicle, which it is. At that point, it will default to its only proven use case thus far: anonymous worldwide financial transactions.

disclaimer: I have a smallish % of my portfolio in both gold and btc.

I don't think this is true at all? All I have to do to acquire Bitcoin is sign up for an account at an exchange, link my bank account, and then hit the buy button. It's exactly as easy to acquire as stocks.

Contrast with physical gold, which I wouldn't know where to acquire.

That said, I think saying that bitcoin will be gone in 15 years is a bit like those people who thought the internet was just a fad. People who "get it" understand its usefulness and as long as there are enough of those people then it will remain.

Being seen as a “low-risk-high-return investment” attracts developers, but only until it stops delivering that promise.

That said, my claim is that most will fail, not that all will fail. You may think that’s weasel words, but I will not accept a currency that even has a 10% chance of failing in 15 years (and if you think that’s harsh, imagine being a bank and taking a 10% risk of default on a relatively short 15 year mortgage), and judging by both http://deadcoins.com (looks like 600 entries, I stopped counting at 200) and the Wikipedia claim that there are over 1172 currencies, that risk is much, much higher than 10%.

I see your list of cryptocoin failures and raise you a list of fiatcoin failures (granted, the latter list, which is much longer, was accumulated over a much larger timescale...)

Bitcoin is the google of cryptocurrencies... it's going to be the leader for a long time.

It might survive… but there’s no way I’d risk money I couldn’t afford to lose the way I would with any G20 economy’s fiat currency.