A very normal question new Bitcoiners ask is "Well whats to stop Bitcoin2 from coming along and displacing the original?"

Its a fair question. Of course they misunderstand how dynamics of "money" work -- that its always a winner-take-all scenario. The bigger Bitcoin gets, the bigger its likely to get.

Bitcoin is largely protected because its a monetary network, it has no "utility" besides being perfect money.

The same dynamics are not true of ETH, SOL, etc. They are basically just "utilities" and thus are much more susceptible to being replaced by the better mousetrap. Your points about SOL > ETH is an example of this....

So we should expect a race to the bottom with regard to utility chains, the cheapest + fastest + most features will win. Yesterday that was ETH, today it may be SOL, 10 years from now it may be something else.

Even if SOL / ETH / etc manages to hang on despite these pressures, there is no reason why the price needs to keep going up forever (I mean above and beyond normal inflation). ETH may survive for next 50 years being priced at ~$2000 indexed for inflation.....ultimately the price will converge upon cost + some profit margin above that.