> If it isn't profitable, they shut down and difficulty adjusts.

If the number of minable coins is fixed that doesn't sound like a perpetually appealing solution. People worry about it because it's still a problem, and you can't update things to fix it.

> Storage and compute will scale to support the ledger and there can be software optimizations.

Storage and compute are both pushed to their limits in terms of bandwidth today, it's not unheard of to find mining facilities that keep the entire ledger in-memory. A lot of the "easy" optimizations (eg. ASICs) as well as hacky ones (eg. CUDA implimentations) have already been exploited to middling success. I'll believe better optimization once I see it.

> ETH would take over, it has more utility anyway.

You know what has more utility than ETH? USD. This sort of "oh you need Xcoin to do Y" is exactly why all cryptocurrency is seen as the parasitic equivalent of sketchy credit card deals. Bitcoin isn't entirely bad, but if we start fighting each other over liquidity and utility then it's already lost compared to fiat. Once you factor in how much of an ass-pain self-custody and L1 txs are, you might as well not hold Bitcoin at all.

> Not with this new admin

My brother in Christ you are talking about an administration headed by a man convicted of 34 criminal charges of falsifying business records in the first degree. You need proof, not guesswork. Given that we are talking about a guilty criminal conspirator and accessory to fraud, I think it's hilarious that you're so willing to write off criminal intent.

> The classic snarky response is "if you're so sure, then short it."

I do short it - I sold my ETH, Chainlink and Bitcoin years ago. I fend off braindead extended family members accosting me during holiday dinner telling me I'm stupid for selling my crypto. I spend time with friends that mock me for selling my diamond hands and insist I need to buy $TSLA or I'll die poor. Now I read comments from insecure HODLers stumbling in off X, desperate to rub their gospel on anyone that didn't fall for it the first time around. The biggest loss I've incurred thus far was the life-hours I've spent entertaining this nonsense like it's a real-life MMO. The immaturity doesn't bother me - it's the deliberate myopia spread by defenders of cryptocurrency that assume the Bitcoin whitepapers still apply as-written in 2024. Today is a very different world and Bitcoin in particular is rather vulnerable in it.

And even zooming out, truth is crypto is dying. It's not one of those things that's even political if you just look at it objectively. Bitcoin itself is on life support and can't be used without a third-party iron lung like Lightning. Ethereum can barely reach consensus on anything and embarrasses itself in it's indecision and by letting Vitalik Buterin run his big fat mouth. The Cambrian explosion of shitcoins decided that memecoins are the most profitable (lmfao) and converged on a suicidal meta for the innovation of crypto. Today's cryptocurrency scene is more stagnant than it was in 2014 despite having more users, which is a horribly alarming sign for anyone holding crypto to sell while the demand still exists. If you've held crypto for more than 6 months, you know that the whole "dApp" promise is a literal scam invented to create demand when none existed. The solution hasn't found a relevant problem to solve. So investors speculate, and hope for the future of the chain is outsourced to morons.