Bitcoin has achieved its promise: "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."

There is absolutely no evidence that Bitcoin is being "held afloat by manipulation". It is also a very liquid market: billions of dollars in daily volume.

> BTC has close to zero barrier to entry

That's wrong. Mining power is a big one. Some other barriers: developer mind share, network effect, branding, perceived fairness in initial distribution, software ecosystem, etc. If it was easy to "replace in a second", it wouldn't still be the top cryptocurrency.

Like I said, you might want to reconsider your sources of information.