This is a question on everyones mind but there is no solid answer. I have scrolled through bitcointalk / reddit / everywhere.
Its one camp vs another vs another ... Therefore many answers to "what will happen" are biased.
I want to simply know.. will Bitcoin scale this year or not? will Bitcoin ever scale ? will August 1st even be of any real significance or will it be Y2K all over again (where nothing happened) ? And if Bitcoin does scale what will happen to the Litecoin (which has recently been taking some of Bitcoins gleem/shine) ?
If Bitcoin doesn't scale it is set to die eventually
Of course, it is unlikely that it is going to die in the way as many if not all shitcoins die, but that might only make its slow and gradual decline more painful and miserable at the end of the day, so if it were a conscious being, it might have preferred a faster and more honorable demise. Obviously, Litecoin is likely to take its place since it has already solved the issues (more specifically, lack of scalability) which would be the ultimate causes of Bitcoin decline. Basically, Litecoin is the same Bitcoin as it should have become if it had managed to successfully scale up (I'm talking from the future where Bitcoin is left for dead)