I think the biggest danger for bitcoin at this point is a massive influx of non-believers in what bitcoin is trying to accomplish for society.
I totally agree with that, but i think that the initial rush (caused by fun, money, greed etc) could drop a little, and that the only ones left using bitcoins will be us who DO believe in the "practicality, the functionality, the security" of the bitcoin system, for our own micro transactions.
On a slightly different note, I'm not even sure I want to see big corps sell their products for CreditCards AND bitcoins, because they're not doing it for the right reasons in the first place. They don't have faith, they just wan't to get on the train alot of people are getting on.
Also there should be a limit to the amount of Ghash an individual can generate, otherwise it kinda proves your in it for the money, not for the ideals and beliefs.
We then ask ourselves do we want bitcoin to become really popular and that all major empires use it, which would then lead to them controlling it's value somehow ? I'm not so sure anymore
Well I personally would not mind it if big corps sold their products for bitcoins also. If they did it would no doubt be because their customer demanded it. Big corporations are practical entities, they do not care for grand ideologies or any such thing. If it makes economic sense for them to accept bitcoins, they will. I think we got a long ways to go until the mega corps will have a "pay with bitcoin" button on their websites, but at the moment I don't see any harm if this were to become a reality.
Don't forget that this "train" is not supposed to be some investment asset. If a corporation treats it as such and decides that "hey we better accept bitcoin payments so we can collect some of these hot bitcoins because we'll make a ton of money selling them later on" then they'd be doing the same thing that a large portion of us are already doing - put your hand up if you bought bitcoins as a speculative investment!
As for limiting the amount of hashing power each miner can generate, well, I don't think that's a good idea, because what if a very large portion of the miners drop from the mining game, then the existing miners can't pick up the slack. I can understand your egalitarian sentiment, but the reality is that bitcoins are money and the miners are in it to make money. If bitcoins were backed by magical fairy dust and were only useful in neverland then miners would not be doing this. The only ones that would be mining would be a very small group of hardcore believers. Then again without that monetary incentive bitcoin would never have grown. It would take an ideological revolution in order for the masses to use bitcoins and to donate their resources to maintaining the network.
Technically speaking you could start your own bitcoin alternative and make it more egalitarian if you'd like.
I think there is a wide variety of reasons why people use bitcoins. Some may use it principally for the economic ideology which is represents, some just want to make money from it, some a mix of both. Bitcoin is an organic in the sense that its future is no determined by some power external to itself. So which group of bitcoin users come to predominate is up to anyone's guess. I see no problem with having a large majority of bitcoin users be average people and with a small group of ideologues at the center of the action. In the end its those motivated by ideological reasons that will propel and do great things for the bitcoin system, but the regular users are also necessary becuase it will make the bitcoin monetary system a very robust one.
If the so called major empires switched to bitcoin it would actually be a VERY good thing. Bitcoin is the digital and modern equivalent of the pre Bretton Woods Agreement gold standard. It will shackle and reign in the fiscal irresponsibility of governments. They have NO control over the bitcoin system whatsoever so they can't just go and print more money to pay for wars or to expand their empires.
I assure you governments can't control bitcoin. They can hurt it but can't really control it.
