Its at the point where it doesn't matter if it goes up or down 10 to 20%. The only important thing is that its decentralized. You couldn't even source enough hardware these days to try and make a dent into the hashpower, never mind taking it over. I will give you just one reason why it will never compete. ETH isn't permissionless. Addresses and transactions can be blocked. So its game over. (at least in terms of being a world reserve currency) Imagine walking into a bank and them telling you that your dollar bill is no good because of the serial number. Or imagine the gold dealer saying your perfectly good bar of gold can't be accepted. (this would be like the US which froze Russian assets... this is what ETH can do) With bitcoin, there is no way to censor you. If you can spin up a node, which is easy to do, you can submit a transaction to the network and any miner will pick it up if you pay the going fee. Also, nobody can freeze any bitcoins at any address. The only way to move bitcoins is to have the private key which you prove by signing the transaction.
there can be a universal decline in hashrates just because people stop trading bitcoins (like beanie baby's). no country will give up its reserve currency and let the market dictate how its exports and imports are priced.
You are placing far too much faith in the system. At some point, when a country losses control of their currency, will they have any other option? To me its not a matter of "if", but rather "when".
“When” that happens it will not be a smooth transition. I’ve learned (and history has shown) in those times survival is random anyway.
Absolutely agree, and us city people are probably toast. The ones with property in the mountains will probably be spared.