Look, i'm not convinced that bitcoin is worth the price it's at right even right now either, but that's just not true.
The network effect is extremely strong in the cryptocurrency space. Everything in the cryptocurrency space supports bitcoin, and fractions of everything support anything else. Payment processors, exchanges, hardware wallets, software wallets, secure storage and backup systems, etc... All of it is focused on bitcoin first, and adds others later (if ever).
If you want to buy or sell bitcoin, you've got tons of repudible options, you want to buy or sell monero? You've got 1/3 of the options, and most of them are small and shady or don't deal with fiat currencies in any way.
If that's not a network effect, I don't know what is.
One could argue the exact opposite - that all the infrastructure around Bitcoin makes it an inferior store of value. For example, the fact that Litecoin does not (yet) have ETFs and other financial vehicles that can be used to manipulate its price without actually dealing with "physical" Litecoins, makes it a more stable store of value.
It took a while for 28.8K modems to catch up with bandwidth needs, and that's part of the reason people thought the internet sucked and was a joke compared to all its promises. I think even today people snort about pets.com as the poster child of the dot-com boom. Then their Amazon Pantry order arrives, which they consume without irony.
Maybe. Or the modem is part of Bitcoin's infrastructure that needs to be replaced. Bitcoin's architecture is reasonably modular, so that is a possible outcome.
I can't read tea leaves better than anyone else, but I do agree with Hal Finney's Bitcoin-or-bust observation. If another cryptocurrency besides Bitcoin takes hold, it's likely that all cryptocurrencies will fail. This is because the scarcity argument proves false -- yes, any individual currency is perfectly scarce, but technological improvements in newer currencies will effectively inflate the entire ecosystem and devalue existing currencies.
That's the weak version of the prediction. The stronger version is that those already in the ecosystem (and thus who have an interest in preserving existing wealth) will see the weak version of the prediction, conclude it's undesirable, and try to prevent it from coming true. Thus they will integrate technological improvements into Bitcoin rather than supporting a separate chain.
The question is whether there is enough momentum already behind Bitcoin to support the strong version of the Finney theory. I think there is; Bitcoin supporters will eventually address its technological weaknesses, and future improvements in cryptocurrency will be implemented in terms of Bitcoin rather than by forking the ecosystem.
You might disagree, and maybe you're right. Maybe Bitcoin is just the modem. Maybe it's the internet. I'm betting it's the internet.
The network effect is extremely strong in the cryptocurrency space. Everything in the cryptocurrency space supports bitcoin, and fractions of everything support anything else. Payment processors, exchanges, hardware wallets, software wallets, secure storage and backup systems, etc... All of it is focused on bitcoin first, and adds others later (if ever).
If you want to buy or sell bitcoin, you've got tons of repudible options, you want to buy or sell monero? You've got 1/3 of the options, and most of them are small and shady or don't deal with fiat currencies in any way.
If that's not a network effect, I don't know what is.