All that's required for people to stop feeling safe and secure is for them to stop feeling safe and secure.
I agree, but people don't just change attitudes about things without some type of forcing. You do realize your statement sounds a little ridiculous, right? Why would someone change their opinion about something unless there was something that caused them to have a change of attitude toward it? In the same way that people's opinions of Bitcoin will favorably change over time given Bitcoin's continued stability, the opposite would also be true. If you agree that people would need to no longer feel that Bitcoin is a safe a secure asset, under what condition would they likely suddenly feel that? I think if you put aside your biases against Bitcoin (you have clear biases when you put "wake up" and "real money" in quotes) and truly answer that question, you'll begin to see how Bitcoin will continue to have a future so long as the technology behind it continues to remain safe and secure.
What makes you feel that the next economic downturn would crash bitcoin? You do realize that the technology came before the speculation correct? The speculation would not have occured had Bitcoin, as a protocol, not shown itself to be a stable and secure network. In fact, the earliest of users of the network weren't speculators, they were visionaries and technologists looking to test the system and get the network up and running and put it through its paces. As the network continued to operate, more and more people saw that it was turning away from being merely an experiment and into something that was truly sound and operational. Therefore, when you make the claim that "Bitcoin will crash to near-nothing", you're suggesting that something would happen to the Bitcoin network that would take it from away from "sound and operational" as it was in its earliest of days when it was indeed worth next to nothing. That means the technology itself would need to fail, which brings me back to my original statement. That's why I ultimately feel that unless there is a true compromise of the network and its secure and sound operation (or something better comes along which is another subject altogether), then Bitcoin will never go to zero in the way that you suggest.
Take gold for example. People always argue how gold has "inherent value" given its uses in industry, electronics, medicine, etc. However, has the market cap for gold ever dropped all the way down to its base market value that only covered its uses for industry, electronics, medicine, etc? If the answer to that is no (which it is), then even during all the economic calamities that gold has withstood as a store of value, it still held value simply because people felt it did, not because of its uses or "inherent value". That means that even during some of the most troubling of economic times, there was still money in gold simply because humans deemed it had some value "just because". The more Bitcoin holds value simply because people feel it does, then it will continue to hold value so long as its technology remains stable enough to justify it.
In other words:
Its the technology that drives its value, not the speculation.
But there's no reason whatsoever to assume that the market cap will remain constant or close to constant. It could skyrocket, it could crash to zero. The one and only factor that differentiates these scenarios is people's willingness to continue pouring money into the bitcoin marketplace. It's all pure speculation on future behavior.
I mean, I know I'm being a downer on cryptocurrencies in a crytpcurrency thread. So by all means you do your thing. I will stick to government-backed currencies and investments backed by real appreciating assets.
I agree, the market cap will likely not remain constant. The point I was making wasn't whether or not the market cap will remain constant. It almost certainly will not. The point I was making was that for Bitcoin to remain a decent store of value long term, very little additional money into the market is required for it to remain a decent store of value. I already addressed above how unlikely it is that Bitcoin will go to zero unless there is a technological mishap. So barring a technical catastrophe, it is more than likely that Bitcoin instead will continue to be a stable store of value given the fact that very little money needs to be infused into the market for it to remain so over the long term. It isn't pure speculation on future market behavior, if anything it is speculation on whether or not the Bitcoin network will remain safe and secure given that fact that its security is what will ultimately drive its adoption rate as has already historically been shown to be true. Given that fact, as someone who has a firm grasp on the technology itself, it will continue to remain a safer investment for me over many of the other options available to me at the moment.
You say that you'll stick with government backed currencies, but all the same critiques you've leveled against Bitcoin can be said of government backed currencies. Fiat currencies are backed by the government, but all that means is that they back them as legal tender under national borders. That doesn't mean that they guarantee their value. That is unless you feel that guaranteeing that they'll be worth less in the future is a valid guarantee. History has shown that citizen faith in any given fiat currency can plummet regardless of whether the government backs its currency.