In fact the limit on size of the IPV4 address space *is* the main reason for migrating to IPV6. That's not going to happen overnight but it's happening (contrary to what someone said yesterday) and will continue to happen.
In the analogy, the general categories being compared are cryptocurrencies and the internet. Bitcoin, litecoin, peercoin, ethereum, etc. are implementations of cryptocurrencies. NPC, IPV4, IPV6, etc., are implementations of internet protocols. So Bitcoin is like NPC in this analogy. IPV4 replaced NPC for good reasons, just as IPV6 will eventually overtake IPV4 for good reasons.
Bitcoin won't be that hard to replace when the time comes. It won't happen overnight, but the hard part is getting exchanges and payment processors and businesses set up to handle crypto. Most of that infrastructure already supports multiple cryptos, not just bitcoin.
A better analogy is to social networking sites. The infrastructure that allowed people to use social networking sites cost a lot of money to build, and it took time to grow the market to the point where the general public was aware of it and starting to use it. And changing wasn't easy. If you had a geocities page and wanted to move to friendster without losing your content, there was no easy way to do it. But then once all of that was in place and the market was big enough, competition exploded because the infrastructure and public awareness were ready. That's what the future of crypto will look like, IMO.
Lets ignore any technical facts for a moment. since they will skew these basic assumptions regardless of technology:
if you take a look at that paper i posted about success of forking, you are right that more (2x) often forking (specially networking/p2p) will end up killing or making the parent obsolete. but in my opinion for cryptocurrency we have to take in account few other facts that dont plague other areas
1. each time there is a scam within btc (exchanges probably being biggest) it drains the trust and adoption rate of btc AND all successful alt coins
2. each time there is a failed alt coin it drains trust and adoption of btc and all other alt coins
3. each time there is a scam coin or scam within an alt coin it drains trust and adoption of all others
there is just too much money floating around. all these negative feedback loops make forking of btc very hard the more time passes. there is a master thesis in the works that looks at this aspect of cryptos
if i would have to bet money i would bet on btc absorbing ideas or totally new fork into it. the idea of an alt coin might become too tainted to be even considered when implementing stuff even if the infra already would accept one.
its kinda sad since we know that forking increases innovation by ten fold
edit: and some good news poopcoin is going to hit all time lows
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