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This seems to be almost purely bandwagon value, like preferring Coca-Cola to some other drink. There are other blockchains that are better technically along a bunch of dimensions, but they don't have the mindshare.

Bitcoin is probably unkillable. Even if were to crash, it won't be hard to round up enough true believers to boost it up again. But it's technically stagnant.

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True, but then so is a lot of "tech". There were certainly, at least equivalent, social applications before and all throughout Facebooks dominance, but like Bitcoin the network effect becomes primary, after a minimum feature set.

For Bitcoin, it doesn't exactly seem to be a network effect? It's not like choosing a chat app because that's what your friends use.

Many other cryptocurrencies are popular enough to be easily tradable and have features to make them work better for trade. Also, you can speculate on different cryptocurrencies than your friends do.

Technically stagnant is a good thing; I'd prefer the term technically mature. It's accomplished what it set out to do, which is to be a decentralized, anonymous form of digital currency.

The only thing that MIGHT kill it is if governments stopped printing money.

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