Bitcoin has an history and infrastructure that cannot be easily replicated.
Newsflash, dipshit: Bitcoin's infrastructure is as a payments network. Bitcoin's history means zip diddly squat if some other alt is backed by a bank with a 50 Billion dollar market cap.
In crypto 5 might as well be 5000 when referring to the competition.
against another grass roots bootstrapped alt, yes. Against an alt backed by a Fortune 500 company or billionaire with a slick multi-million dollar marketing campaign, no.
Your point about gold's transaction throughput is laughable. The limits on gold transaction and its very real cost is considerable given its physical nature. Even 7 tps accross the world is better than the transportability of gold.
yes, but your fees make the divisibility of BTC much more limited. I'm pretty sure there are far more than seven global gold transactions per second. Even more when you count micropayments, like buying shots of Goldschlager. And, other than Government thugs, no assholes arguing that we should minimize them.
Comparing Bitcoin's network effect to MySpace where there is essentially no cost to the users for switching networks confirms you as just another simple noob. Did you buy this account? You can't have possibly registered in 2011 and utter such idiocy.
What's the cost of trading BTC for any alt on any one of a dozen exchanges? A fraction of a percent? The only costs are paying your goddamn miner fees and waiting for your confirmations. It's not the switchers like me you need to worry about. It's the people who enter crypto going straight to the alt that better suits their needs.