That's right, only pussies defeat themselves psychologically before the battle begins.  I'd prefer not to fight and just be free, but am prepared for defense of financial freedom from those who would try to aggressively take it away.

I really appreciated OP views and others that work hard to think about pitfalls. He has some good points. As for my thoughts:

1. IT'S A DECENTRALIZED CURRENCY

Not a valid reason for failure. Gold is decentralized--controlled yes, manipulated yes, but largely cannot regulate effectively, even though USA has tried in the past. Bitcoin won't fail because it is decentralized. If anything, it guarantees success just maybe not at the level you are imagining.

I suppose if the USA issued a statement that you can go to jail if you issue a BTC transaction of any sort, then it would be doomed, but then I think you have rebellion and we are doomed anyway. 

2. CENTRALIZED MAIN DEVELOPMENT

Not a reason for failure, but a risk. I have always argued that you can be an atheist and hate religion and the manipulationg and control it represents, but then I say you are probably putting your faith in a different group of priests, which can just as easily create their own tyranny.

I think the same idea applies here. You can hate the government and believe bitcoin is the answer, but ultimately we are putting our faith in a different group of politicians. However, if anything this is a harbinger of success not failure, global domination must be organized, planned and executed, so bitcoin foundation get to it.

3. FLAWED ARCHITECTURE

Yes could cause failure if 100TB is necessary tomorrow, no will not because it is software and we have years... if they can fix healthcare.gov bitcoin blockchain will evolve and remain decentralized. Guaranteed and I know nothing about the ideas anyone has ever thrown around on this.

4. Double Spends

Same as as #3 and a stretch anyway.

5. Slow Speed

Bitcoin does not need to replace fiat to be worth $10k a BTC, it only needs to be considered relatively liquid, similar but rather different issue.

6. Un-Scalable

Same as #3, and #4, if

51% Attacks

A risk, however, why would they raid their own hen house. It this happens, it would be because of sabotage from unseen forces like Ed Snowden's boss.

Unstable Exchange Rate

Definitely not a failure point. It will solve itself over time. Gold is unstable but will always be valuable. I lost 5k in gold value this year alone.

4. NO BENEFIT OVER FIAT

BTC never needs to replace fiat, and it does have benefit your post eludes to a few. BTC is its own class, I agree that right now a regular currency it is not.

5. CONCLUSION

No real red flags for failure to me that I see.

I don't even care about how many Bitcoin users there are. How many individual investors are there in AAPL??? Likely a few million. AAPL is worth 500+ billion i think. That is one single puny stock.

 

OK. I'll give failure a try....

Apple decides to create a centralized digital currency - AppleCoin. It's a copy of the bitcoin source except it confirms faster, but still it is double sha-256. Apple pre-mines this coin.

Then Apple announces that all new products come pre-installed with x number of AppleCoin on them.

Apple fixes the exchange rate of AppleCoin by expanding their AppStore into direct competition with Amazon. The fixed rate of exchange for an AppleCoin is the same as a bitcoin. Said another way, you can spend AppleCoin in the AppStore and get everything you can at Amazon at the same exchange rate that bitcoin is trading at.

Except.... Apple has made the difficulty slightly easier than bitcoin so miners leave the bitcoin network to concentrate on the Apple network. This has the effect of increasing the desirability (price) of AppleCoin and decreasing the desirability (price) of bitcoin.

No one cares that AppleCoin is centralized. No one cares about bitcoin as a protocol. No one cares because when you buy an apple product it's like getting it for free because.... AppleCoin.

And that's how bitcoin met its demise.

as bitcoin rises more and more haters will arise
but also more and more lovers
when i am on Africa and i can pay my university tuition fees in Cyprus on Bitcoin it is an act of freedom
we have to concentrate on the freedom part of bitcoin - it liberates us from the jails of governments and their games to the people.

i believe one of the main reasons it will succeed is the decentralization - just like open source everything has succeeded over proprietary everything last 7 years.
look at the web-> proprietary at first ->open source now
look at the things -> proprietary at first -> open source now (opensource hardware - 3d printers etc )
look at funding -> a small bunch of people at first -> crowdfunding now (kickstarter.com etc)
look at money -> banks at first -> cryptocurrencies next
look at the people -> slavery at first -> freedom next

aren't you seeing the waves of freedom?
we as a humanity flowing towards that direction, the direction of freedom

Of all the potential pitfalls mentioned this is the most worrisome one. Far from being FUD or as someone once said "it is not fear porn if you tell someone to move off the tracks when there is a train coming."

The moment BTC (or any alt coin for that matter) would be widely accepted as a form of payment for stuff like grocery, clothes, utility bills, gas, real-estate..etc at that moment the hammer would fall and it always falls the hardest. This ofc is theory since it would not even be allowed to come to such a wide spread adoption.
 
Why?

No taxation.

Let them march (and protest) as long as they pay their taxes. The pigs at the top of the food chain (political and business elite) live off your taxes (and your mindless shopping). A wide spread BTC adoption = a drastic decrease in tax income = no more cocaine and high class hookers for G20, Davos and other such "high level" meetings, no more money to pay for "protection" to police, fire-brigade,  NSA, CIA, FSB...no more money to pay for foreign geostartegic time limited scope limited kinetic actions, no money to drone bomb Yemeni weddings....


Money makers will never sit idle and watch their flock transit to BTC. Given how things are, the flock even helps them. Disgustingly greedy nature of people drives them to use BTC as a speculative instrument. Whatever or whoever Satoshi is, i highly doubt the original intention of BTC was for it to be used for speculation.

If people ever had awareness of what it might do to the baking sector, they would
first: buy and then HOLD
second: go to their bank and withdraw all the money left in there.

They would not sell to make a quick buck at the expense of others. Using bots for trading, hyping, pumping, dumping - makes them same as the pigs.


BTC is not...or....is not just a monetary instrument. BTC is an instrument of war.


Are you ready to fight?


Like in the cartoon - Bugs life....ants are many and grasshoppers are few. Just that the ants from the desert of the real are a bunch of brain dead ass fucks - aggressive, acquisitive, competitive...      

edit: grammar, spelling  

Interesting. So you've discovered a new economic principle whereby increasing the supply of item A relative to item B results in the price of item B to drop in relation to item A.

I sense a Nobel prize in the works.

But that would seem to have little relationship to AppleCoin.

Speaking of diamonds and their artificially inflated price. We are several decades into the manufacturing of perfect artificial diamonds. The price of which is very low.
The diamond cartels maintain their position by convincing gullible young women that natural is better... how can you tell them apart? Natural diamonds are full defects and cost a ton of money while an artificial diamond is perfection itself and is super cheap.

Schiff made that same AppleCoin point too, only more eloquently I think.

What if some organization, say some bank in China, sees the advantages of Bitcoin and makes their own. It's a 1:1 copy of BTC, only they premine it, and also declare that 1 coin is worth 1ounce of gold.

Why would anyone still mine Bitcoin? You could switch your miners to mine this new coin, and boom, you're getting free gold. Then the bank can work in coordination with governments, rich folks, and really just the 1%. The people won't know the difference. To them the utility of using a Cryptocoin is the same whether it's Bitcoin, some AltCoin, or a Chinese BitGoldCoin.

But wait, there's more. Sure you could use BTC. But then good luck securing your coins. That's already a problem. Storage solutions at the moment are just not good. I've personally lost 1BTC that way back in the day. Many people have lost much more. But no need to worry about it with the Chinese BitGoldCoin. It's already being issued by a bank, so they'll also guarantee you safe storage at their servers. It's already a bank. And since it's centralized, there's no need for the community to run full nodes.

It just paints a picture of a theoretical 1%-backed CryptoCoin to do a hell of a lot better with the general public than Bitcoin can do.