Enough background, now on to the topic at hand. I am now all too familiar with the challenges BTC has in front of it, and i sincerely can't see a solution.
Then you're short sighted. The solutions aren't hard to come by. They are hard to push through, as everything has to be supported by the majority, and if we get to a 55-45 situation it won't be good for the coin.
1. Slow transactions - If you pay a high enough fee (at the moment over $15), you'll get a 10 minutes confirmation for your transaction. So at the very least it takes 10 minutes for a transaction to pass through, which really isn't so much assuming one is willing to pay the high fee. If one doesn't want to pay over $1 (i mean why should we, since the original idea of cryptos was that they should be cheap, fast and anonymous!), then one will wait indefinitely, probably for days or even damn weeks!!!
Not really. If last block was mined at 5:50 and you're sending the transaction at 5:58, chances are you will only have to wait 1-3 minutes for a confirmation. 10 min is the maximum provided that your fee was high enough. It's a decent transaction time, especially that most banks need days to handle the same thing.
2. High fees - Now over $15 for high priority on the blockchain. Imagine if the price were to multiply by 5x. The fees!! $100+ per transaction maybe? This is insane. Satoshi Nakamoto has/have probably unfortunately died (i mean he/they WOULD by now have come forward and said enough is enough, miner cartels are ruining the BTC system and these high fees are outrageous insanity) turning in his grave with the hell that is happening to the BTC's ecosystem.
The fees keep growing because people keep paying more and more to get faster confirmations. It's free market, if you keep bidding to be on top you potentially can reach a point where your fee will be always higher than the amount of money you're sending. And who would there be to blame? The coin, the miners, or you?
IMO you're wasting time speculating about Satoshi. He may or he may not be dead, like the cat
3. Lack of solutions - The major solution everyone is currently clinging to is the Lightning Network. Really?? It is still theoretical.
We don't know a lot of things. Will quantum computing affect BTC? Will the regulators try to block it? What about net neutrality? There's too many unknowns.
Should we abandon the project because there can be no lightning network? I think we shouldn't because every project has a certain degree of risk in it and I like my chances here.
4. Miner cartels?
You're speculating too much and worrying yourself with things that you can't control. People who have money have power. It's like that in the real world and in the Internet. cryptocurrencies are no different. If someone dumps 1 billion in crypto we will all feel it, just like you will feel when a rich guy bribes a group of thugs to give you a beating. Life isn't fair.
5. Bitcoin considered solely as a store of value. Right now, the only use of BTC is functioning as a store of value.
It's still a lot. Physical gold has survived wars and governments. Now we have it's virtual version that can't be falsified and is easy to carry and trade. Isn't it great?
Bitcoin is functioning as a payment system in Korea and Japan. I could even order food with it or pay the dentist nearby. It's fun to be using something nobody else does, it's a great talk at parties and a great speculative asset, just ask all those traders who made it their full-time job.
So i ask again what makes Bitcoin the King? Network effect? The fact that it has been time-tested longer than any other crypto? A supposed community that supports it (what support they give eludes me too, i don't see much support actually)? Right now i see the BTC as a bloated, outdated and overvalued ecosystem that may survive and continue to thrive just because it has the first mover advantage and biggest network, but i am not sure of it and would really appreciate if it actually kept the edge in it's design and technology too over other cryptos. Right now i don't see it at all.
Mostly the name, the established brand, as well as the community. Currently people are using it as a safe haven during unstable times. Read what's happening in Venezuela and Zimbabwe. A similar thing was happening in China before the ban. People are using it to do everything the governments are trying to stop them from. Moving money out of the country, hiding income, buying banned goods and services, gambling. It's a rebel coin and the rebel in me is supporting it in full.