Actually the best way to kill it or kill it off, is to leave it to the devs..
I know of 3 bugs in the origional bitcoin application, that, despite countless updates, resemble battlefield bad company. See, I cant understand why with so many updates, the bugs people actually WANT removed are allowed to stay, "but we'll add this n that, creating more bugs people can complain about that we know we can fix" - Yeah.. How many changes were made to our wallet's? My lass has 600 bitcoins in her origional wallet, yet she has to install how many different versions BEFORE she can get to use them? Instant? Yeah, after 5 years of re-downloading blockchains before she can do whatever.. and that's of course if she can find every version of bitcoin that had changes made by people who are nothing to do with bitcoin, other than pretending satochi was the bitcoin creator..
Bitcoin app still closes when it wants. Runaway exception's causing whatever we have downloaded of the blockchain to be ruined, so start again.. and again.. how long will it take to download the blockchain in 5 years time?
Fact is, the app itself 'appears' to have zero or miniscule changes, yet how many versions of bitcoin app have been released?
Leave it to the devs.. since they probably own over 60% and wont part with them. Then there's the looming governmental controls.. it's bad enough trying to obtain bitcoins without wondering if they are worth anything at all in the real world, instead of purchasing power that gets ya 10 grands worth of pc that wont be worth half in the next year..
Look at all them faucets.. the fact they tell lies on their first page is enough to put any sensible person off them. Then ya get the stealthepixels scam of, visit next site to be paid instantly.. do you get paid instantly? NO. Conned again by a bitcoin dev.
Think I'm wrong?
75% of the world has NEVER heard of bitcoin, never mind used a computer.
Go on devs.. keep your bitcoins, cause if you think they are worth it, 75% of the world will be like, eh?
You are mistaken as to how bitcoin works. You don't need any of the blockchain to spend it. All you need is the private keys, and to know which inputs you want to spend and a way to broadcast your TX to the network.
I wouldnt say I'm mistaken, maybe misunderstanding, but I have run 2 networks as a test, started each with it's own blockchain, and succesfully placed a found block from one blockchain into another, from then, the two became 1 new one run by two networks. I dont think I'm mistaken, when I think I can not so much 'replace' as 'remix' the blockchain by adding another tune entirely.. it is all a matter of when to do what..
If I had 600 BTC, I wouldn't mind waiting for a couple of days for the blockchain download... More to the point, you don't really need to wait for the complete download of the blockchain to use it. Without it, your balance would not be necessarily up to date because the app doesn't see all the transactions but if you just want to spend you can create a transaction. TBH, the bitcoin core app isn't the best wallet application at all. Its strength is in the implementation of the bitcoin protocol. As a matter of fact, the majority of bitcoin users don't even run it.
The devs own a miserable portions of the coins. They could have but they are devs and not miners or investors. Besides, only of them is paid for their work on bitcoin.
Faucets are scams. Yes, but that's the fault of the faucet - not of bitcoin. Do you blame the dollar for the scams in dollar?
Bitcoin mining is like moving train. In the beginning, it was going at a very slow pace and very little computing resource was used. Satoshi mined a million BTC with a laptop and he could have done it in an instant if he wanted. Some altcoins premine. With the current adoption, it moves at a very fast speed. Jumping on board is nearly impossible. Your experiment shows that you can jump on a slow moving train but it won't work with the main blockchain.
I'm not saying that bitcoin is without flaws but your analysis is incorrect on the technical aspects.
However, whether bitcoin will work or not doesn't depend only on that. Bitcoin could die simply because people don't care / don't trust it and not because someone decides to kill it.