Why it's Bitcoin or nothing

I listened to a podcast recently where Elon Musk was being a bit critical of Bitcoin. That's fine, we should be critical, but I think there is something important to understand that is not well understood by technologists.

Bitcoin is competing as a store of value and as a payment network. Payment networks are a solved problem. You could put a payment network on top of Bitcoin in the same way you could put a payment network on top of Visa. Layering is also a solved problem.

Store of value is not a solved problem. This only relates to the technology insofar as people trust the technology or they don't. Storing value is fundamentally a trust problem. Trust that others will agree. Trust that the protocol won't fail. It has nothing to do with transaction speeds or energy use or anything like that. Gold is a tremendous energy consumer and does zero transactions per second.

Bitcoin could run on baby seal oil and settle one transaction a day and the world might still price everything in Satoshis one day. That's the game here.

Right now global trade is denominated in dollars. This has not bogged down the postal system. No dollars are harmed when the world prices everything in dollars.

What can't happen is that something else comes and usurps Bitcoin as a store of value. As a payment network? Sure. As a store of value? Impossible. Why? Because stores of value are about trust, and if something usurps Bitcoin then the naysayers that say that "Bitcoin" and "crypto" are interchangeable will be right. Nobody will trust "crypto" as a store of value ever again because whatever token seems to be winning will just be replaced by something "better." Bitcoin has something that can't be replicated by technology. It was the first.

It's the same as thinking some alloy that you created might replace gold as a store of value because everyone is going to believe your marketing about why its "better" when in reality what would happen if that idea started to take off is that nobody would trust metals as a store of value anymore... and you'd get a dozen competitors explaining why its actually better to mix gold with copper or zinc with cadmium and why their special metal blend (that they have a bunch of and will happily sell you) is the best blend.

And hey, wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what the long tail of "store of value" shitcoins looks like.

Edit: Some further clarification

Think of the dollar. The dollar isn't a payment network, but everything is denominated in dollars.

You can transact dollars with PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, Tether, checks, Venmo, money orders, physical dollar bills, etc. In total, there are probably a thousand ways to transact in dollars all over the world. Dollars do zero transactions per second.

What I am saying:

The store of value aspect of Bitcoin cannot be replicated by technology, because it isn't a technology problem. We may have a future where value is denominated in Satoshis. We may not. We will not have a future where value is denominated in some XYZ coin.

What I am not saying:

Bitcoin is the best payment network. Everyone will use Bitcoin as a payment network because its the best technology for payment networks.