Bitcoin is doing better than ever. Even the big boys like hedge funds, billionaires, banks and even nation states are coming on board because of its perfect store of value properties.
At the moment store of value and international payments is by far the most important use case, only this can bring the market cap to trillions what will cause the price to rise another + 10x. Merchant adoption will follow when Lightning network comes online for consumers, it will replace alts like Dash, Zcash and Monero.
The future of Bitcoin has never been so bright, the looming fork is a risk but probably game theory will lead it to a positive outcome like it did the 1st of august. I think the chance that the BTC price will reach 10.000 per coin soon is way bigger than the chance that failing Bcash takes over.
P.S. Sorry that I only up voted my own text, I don't want to make FUD like this more visible
I think you are overestimating stuff here. Hedge funds are just speculating, banks are pretty much hostile right now, and governments don't really care, perhaps they just want tax revenue but dont care about the specific coin.
In fact they are more interested in Ethereum that can create some smart contracts for easier government databases management.
I'm sorry but LN is a joke, it has been proven already that it can't scale and it will introduce a lot of centralization.
I don't know in what world you are living, but the /r/Bitcoin echochamber has really clouded your judgement, you should research more into this and you will see that it's all a big sham.
Bitcoin will not succeed in it's current form.
Hedgefunds and billionairs are already starting to buy in. Banks are fighting it because they feel treated by it (proves its succes), but many of them are buying in too (may be to manipulate the market or to have a big stake if they can't stop it). Countries like Russia and North Korea are interesting in it because it undermines the USD and also Estonia, Japan and Australia are extremely friendly. I suspect these countries will start buying bitcoin for their treasury soon if they aren't doing already. Remember that when some countries start, an armsrace could start because the first to buy in buys cheap and the last one pays a high price.
On LN i disagree, it will be a very good way to scale the smaller payments, there is totally no need to do this on blockchain. It will for sure displace Dash and other alts, exactly the reason why so many alt investors are against segwit.
I have many sources of information and for sure reddit isn't my main source. Good luck staying heavily invested in alts and rejecting bitcoin, but please not try to bring this FUD to people who ARE interested in Bitcoin.
Here's an upvote from me too ;)