"Soon" would be in the next 1-3 years or so.
One of the biggest dangers for BTC is something more useful coming along and investors switching - a process which could happen extremely fast, once started.
So to all the tech savy people in here - what advantages could other cryptocurrencies bring that will give them a crucial edge over BTC, and how fast could something like that come along?
it is more a matter of which coin can work best alongside bitcoin. Up until this point, it looks like it will be litecoin because of the faster transaction times, and the adoption slowly getting picked up by merchants.