I am aware that I am not the only one convinced that Bitcoin will fail. Maybe the Bitcoin price will even stop falling and rise again once more, but finally it will fail. See the linked comment for my reasoning.
They argued about the exact numbers but they did by no means show that the argument is invalid. Bitcoin has no important advantages over credit cards or PayPal, besides the claimed low transaction costs. And this argument is not true, not now and it is not obvious that it will become true in the future.
The number one innovation from bitcoin is not its low transaction cost. Its the blockchain, that is to say the possibility for two people to make a transaction without a centralized third party involved.
I said advantages, not innovations. Nobody cares about whether there is a centralized authority or not. I never ordered something on Amazon and was secretly concerned that paying with my credit card involves some central authorities. It may be a nice goody but it is nothing average people care about and therefore no reason for them to adopt Bitcoin.
Innovations never look like huge advantages or more than "nice goody" until people start using them in practical way. People used to say that the internet was a nice goody but that fax was good enough. Yeah, right.
But the Internet really made some things orders of magnitude easier or faster or possible at all. But what could the advantages of having no central authority be? There are some rare scenarios like the economy of a country collapsing where being independent could be useful. Or when banks are socialized. But do these scenarios justify all the hassle? Or am I missing something? Where or when else is it advantageous?
EDIT: Read that [1] for my reasoning instead of blindly down voting opinions you don't like or at least point out where I am wrong.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8905475