What if the population decreases rapidly in the future, while Monero will keep churning out new coins in eternity?
Don't you think the deflationary nature of BTC will shine for a store of value?
Store of what value ? what value does it have if it's not used for anything else aside from speculation ?
Gold has seen several generations and centuries yet, it’s been valued all the same. Why is that? It’s because, value is places where people sense it to be. It’s more of what the mind thinks or attributes to certain objects due to how rare it is and not because, there isn’t sufficient of this and that element.
As such, Bitcoin is a scares commodity, that makes it rare and has value to it. Now, it’s not unusual that people might seem to preserve that value within it by holding.
If population decreased drastically (I suppose WW3 or Alien attack), then the crypto they hold would most probably disappear with them.
We need new supply to replenish the lost coins.
With so many nukes in our world today, you’ll just hope we don’t have some crazy leader somewhere on the planet decide to let it rain on us because, we really would have the world greatly reduced. Perhaps they could go the way they’ve been going as some theories speculates, Ebola, Covid, vaccinations and leave war alone.
Even in the face of all that, we would t need anything new for crypto replacement or replenishment. In fact, those who has it as am sure there would be some percentage of people that would own it even still. The government do own cryptos. Not like they bought or something but, the seized ones at least. Let’s not forget where it is legal tender and amongst its citizens.
It just wouldn’t go out but, would find itself having more value and the lost ones due to deceased owners, lost wallets and private keys, lack of the technology to work it would only add to the scarcity and those who owns what need be to work theres. Maybe it might take time but, survivals would gradually clamor back to the system.