I apologize if this has been brought up before. If it has, please feel free to merely direct me to the applicable thread. As an investor, one of the hurdles I am having a hard time getting over is the following: What happens to the market for bitcoins when/if a vastly superior design is found? What is the probability of an unquestionably superior design being found?
The risk of a vastly superior design would be unlikely to collapse bitcoin, because stakeholders still likely consider their bitcoins to have value -- and that's the fundamental underpinnings of any currency including bitcoin, shared idea of value.
It is more likely that a sudden bitcoin collapse could be triggered by a software flaw that permits trivial minting / generating / copying of bitcoins.