my main thoughts were would it survive and thrive? or die out because the speculation market is gone.
Some of us are here to get away from the control that comes with fiat. I would go so far as to assume that some of the more hardcore Bitcoin proponents feel this way. If someone managed to control Bitcoin (which I see as unlikely at this point), many of those hardcore proponents would be gone the next day.
You do realize that the "control scheme" you're so worried about is actually completely automated in Bitcoin, and the very reason why gold is no longer used as a currency: unmanaged money supply will never be stable, and instability makes for unusable currency.