It certainly won't be like gold
Simply because gold has unique properties that no other metal or substance can reproduce. By and large, Bitcoin is essentially just one cryptocurrency among many others out there. It enjoys the first-mover advantage, of course, but this is obviously not enough to always stay at the top. In fact, I can tell what will happen if Bitcoin fails to scale. It will first stagnate with it price lacking enough growth, then its profitability will start to suck, and after that people will massively dump their Bitcoin stashes in favor of more profitable coins which don't fail to keep up with the progress (evidently, not limited to solving just scalability issues)
Simply because gold has unique properties that no other metal or substance can reproduce. By and large, Bitcoin is essentially just one cryptocurrency among many others out there. It enjoys the first-mover advantage, of course, but this is obviously not enough to always stay at the top. In fact, I can tell what will happen if Bitcoin fails to scale. It will first stagnate with it price lacking enough growth, then its profitability will start to suck, and after that people will massively dump their Bitcoin stashes in favor of more profitable coins which don't fail to keep up with the progress (evidently, not limited to solving just scalability issues)
You do have a point there, mate. Comparing Gold and Bitcoin nowadays, is just like comparing apples and oranges. Given the fact that Bitcoin lacks many of the properties of Gold such as fungibility, it is difficult to compare as digital gold.
Also, one of the biggest problems Bitcoin is facing right now is its ability to scale to a large user base. Because it is having a hard time trying to reach full consensus within its community, the vision of using it for mainstream payments will become quite distant into turning as a reality.
Therefore, there are currently better cryptocurrencies with greater features, and scalable solutions already activated within their protocols. In this regard, Bitcoin has been already outmatched, but in terms of market cap and value, it is still king.
Nevertheless, only time will tell if it will be able to keep up as the king of cryptocurrencies or not. Just my thoughts
