My idea is that bitcoin will "die" in the not-too-distant future (maybe next month ?), not because of scaling and fees and the likes ; but rather because it has been designed as a greater-fool game, with huge initial seigniorage, followed by a severe restriction of coin emission, making it a perfect pyramid game.  When the pyramid gets too big, there's not enough greater fools coming in, and smaller pyramids grow faster with the same amount of greater fools, until they get big too.

In the end, many "last layers of greater fools" will get burned, and this game will be left for a generation or so.

Bitcoin screwed it.  It could have been a freedom money, but Satoshi designed it into a "get rich quickly" pyramid game ; in doing so, he found imitators (alt coins) which all are "greater fool games", and it entirely killed the original freedom idea, not leaving any room for a real crypto currency.  This stuff has to blow up now, make blood flow, and be forgotten.  To leave room for a genuine crypto currency.  But in the mean time, the powers that be have been awakened, and the small window of opportunity that existed to make a freedom currency has been blown by bitcoin's built-in greed-system.

However, if professional gamblers (banks, financial institutions) join the greater fool game before it breaks down, it can still go on a long time and go very high, before it will be the cause of the next financial crisis.