I am thinking I will likely have to start mining the alt-coins that support ASIC miners and turning them into BTC's to get ahead, unless the amount of Bitoin's in the world increase from 11 million to whatever the next increment is. But Bitcoin will never die.
i'm dabbling - mining SHA alt coins, trading them for BTC and ploughing it all into cloud mining - if you can't beat them, join them.
That's exactly the thing that will increase the value back into BTC, and starve off the alts a bit. Exactly what I expect most Titan owners will do. Mass roaming altpool Titans trading all their alts for BTC
There's more to it. Most alts are going to have a short life span. Some will not. I don't think LTC is going to be a big winner, because they have managed inadvertently to establish themselves as the "also ran" coin. A great many of them are just people playing or scamming. But there are a few that have some serious potential. It's in the dumps right now, but the horse I'm officially backing is Earthcoin. It's designed to be a global cheap currency, and it's ASIC mineable. I know a couple guys mining it with gridseeds already.
Bitcoin is the trailblazer. I don't see it dying, but I don't see it being the ultimate winner either. It has some limitations to its success, such as transaction times and a lot of negative press. This will allow it's competitors to exploit it's known problems for their gain. This in turn will strengthen the eco system. I see the development of scrypt asics as a very positive development.
But some things need to happen that haven't yet. Ready transference in and out of various fiat currencies, Point of Sale systems OUTSIDE of the internet, and more trading pairs. While I find it personally offensive, DOGE is likely to be a big winner in the asic age, because it's already a big winner. This also lends more credence to my long standing postulate that Einstein was fundamentally wrong. The Universal Constant is NOT the speed of light. It's perversity. I see evidence in favor of this every single day.
One way or another, Bitcoin has changed currency forever. I think it's likely to remain the "standard" by which other coins are judged, but I don't think that it will always be king of the hill.