being slightly more stable than fiat currencies that have collapsed is hardly a selling point, that is like saying my shit stinks slightly less than my neighbours a currency needs stability to get acceptance and adoption. Laundering is still a huge issue, yes it is only semi anonymous but when combined with tumbler services and poorly regulated exchanges you can overcome the not anonymous part to launder money. new fad, have not really seen that argument, but yes agree there. Proof of work is simply a bad model, especially when some of them use far more sustainable models.

Since you actually engaged and didn't rabble-rabble, here are some high-level clarifications:

Store of value...the most popular currency has no backing, other than "trust."

Laundering...BTC is NOT anonymous, and the ledger can be audited; that's what took down Silk Road.

New fad...BTC has been around for 9+ years

Too costly to produce...nearly all those estimates use peak potential and come out absurdly high, especially when compared to the mining and printing of other currencies.

Too volatile...it's far more stable than the most volatile fiat currencies, some of which are essentially dead now.

Bitcoin has a scaling problem. Other coins don't. See: XRP, XLM, RaiBlocks, etc. They can do ~100,000+ transactions per second which is more than credit card companies. And they can do it in some cases for free.

But will those even grow enough if investors are turned off by bitcoin's eventual collapse? And will there be enough currency to go around for the general public? And will countries even allow an international currency that's not bound to gold or any fixed commodity and that's also not regulated by any official governing body?

No, it's not crashing. Just keep mining and hold on to it. It's the best way to fight back at those on wall street.

Don't know why you think bitcoin will collapse. It has its own resolution to its scaling problem with lightning network.

Hopefully FairX can uncouple these altcoins from bitcoin so each can rise and fall independently but time will tell. If you're not aware, FairX is an exchange that has not yet come to market but the plan is to be able to exchange fiat directly for any altcoin and vise versa without the need to go fiat -> bitcoin (or ethereum) -> altcoin.

Good luck to any government trying to stop this.

Lots of exchanges and companies already allow you to go fiat ->altcoin for many of the various altcoins. and the lightning network is not a fix, it is a bandaid on a gaping wound, it addresses scalability by introducing a slew of other problems and weakening security.