http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/adam-smith-hates-bitcoin/?_r=0You ignore the wealth of nations, and point out what would happen if we rendered bitcoin as a gold, higher velocity currencies would arise. What you point out about other clones is not observable as reality in a non vacuum because bitcoin is real and so what you point out must be related to bitcoin. There is only one first to the market; such is its value. I think this should be clear.
The gold and silver money which circulates in any country, and by means of which, the produce of its land and labour is annually circulated and distributed to the proper consumers, is, in the same manner as the ready money of the dealer, all dead stock. It is a very valuable part of the capital of the country, which produces nothing to the country. The judicious operations of banking, by substituting paper in the room of a great part of this gold and silver, enable the country to convert a great part of this dead stock into active and productive stock; into stock which produces something to the country. The gold and silver money which circulates in any country may very properly be compared to a highway, which, while it circulates and carries to market all the grass and corn of the country, produces itself not a single pile of either. The judicious operations of banking, by providing, if I may be allowed so violent a metaphor, a sort of waggon-way through the air, enable the country to convert, as it were, a great part of its highways into good pastures, and corn fields, and thereby to increase, very considerably, the annual produce of its land and labour.
First, Krugman is always wrong, and secondly Adam Smith did not live to see the amazing technological development of cryptocurrency.
We can't just "render bitcoin as a gold", only the global marketplace can decide that, not a few random people on the internet.
I suggest a smaller block size, that creates a less transactible material in the velocity sense, would effect price.
A smaller block size can only serve to drive up user fees (to a point of exhaustion), to compete for space, but price is exogenous to that, and is a measure of the value of the whole network. Only if the network is nurtured (by software improvements to make it bigger and better), not crippled (by the deadweight of high fees, and transaction frequency rationing) can price rise.
I am certain that cryptocurrency is the electronic gold of the future, whether it will be Bitcoin is still unclear.