I've seen a handful of people mentioning the possibility of XMR overtaking BTC. Is this just XMR fever talking, or is there some rational basis for this argument?
I see the odds of XMR overtaking BTC being close to nil. That said, I believe there's a high probability it could be a strong 2nd, overtaking LTC as BTC's "silver".
Either XMR fails catastrophically, or it surpasses BTC by a large margin: The use-cases and scalability of XMR cover a much wider range than BTC; most actors suffer for having their private financial details published indiscriminately.
It is only the limitations of bounded rationality and human linear thinking which assign intermediate outcomes the bulk of the probability mass. The underlying fundamentals push the actual mass out to the tails.
I can see a future where Joe Six-Pack, who doesn't know or care much about the benefits of anonymity, uses BTC. Meanwhile, his twenty-something son, who lives in the basement, is buying LSD and MDMA with XMR.
Now, if the taxman starts coming after Joe Six-Pack and his BTC wealth, that significantly changes things.
The benefits of XMR must be powerful enough and known well enough to be able to overcome BTC's first mover advantage and blockchain add-on functionality for it to be used preferentially in licit transactions.