I still haven't heard a good excuse for core dev concentration in one for profit company other than "trust us".
These are two perfectly good reasons and really the only reasons you need:
1) open source code
2) consensus execution of that code by miners voting with their processing power
Again, why wouldn't we expect a SC fork of bitcoin with perfect anonymity to take over?
This is not so black and white. I suppose there could be a real threat of a side chain taking over if there is little to no perceived risk by the market to move from chain to chain, but if the market perceives little to no risk then maybe there is little to no risk. Savers will likely park their money in the safest chain, i.e. the chain with the highest hashrate and bitcoin could cease to be the dominant chain at some point. I don't see why it couldn't happen.
Neither do I. And it would be very disruptive to hodlers who make up most of bitcoin today. And it could be a never ending transition add new innovations take place. Some of us would rather just leave our coins in cold storage for a few decades.
brg444, I'm past the part about core dev altcoin implementations. I do see how it would be a hard sell for them although not impossible to sell to noobs. You forget that we are witnessing the power of what they can do RIGHT NOW with this SC proposal. They've banded together precisely to push this proposal through as a for profit company which requires a fork for them to be successful. It's not a wild thought imagining them trying to implement a new currency some day. LukeJr has talked about demurrage coin on reddit. Why? I could see a day where he starts one on his own and claims its just him personally, not Blockstream. Unlikely but possible.
On planes all day so in and out
Altcoins can be created as an easy way for governments to create a Bitcoin backed fractional reserve coin. Perhaps Blockstreams's customer base will be governments that can force their acceptance. At least with a guaranteed percentage fractional reserve in Bitcoin it will appease their largest stakeholders. If they are trying to deceive the general public, then they will be exposed. Only governments are allowed to do that and get away with it.