I take your points and agree with your end argument. Keeping Bitcoin decentralised should be the priority though I do wonder with the current set up and where BTC finds itself currently with blockstream et al. I see bitcoin and wanting to change things and implement new features, very similar to a very large corporation with a massive IT infrastructure. Nobody wants to touch anything without very costly consultations lasting a number of years with endless testing. By the time most had upgraded to Windows 7 from XP, Windows 10 was already on the cards. Bitcoin right now is still king and so essential to the space, that nobody wants to break it. It's a bit like trying to change every single moving component on a commercial airliner operating at full capacity whilst it is in the air.

The lightning network worries me but I urge you to look into Gavin's proposed solutions, more specially with homomorphic encryption and and non interactive zero knowledge proofs(which are the most viable). These two would still require extensive testing when interacting with DLT. All the other proposals from the research I have done are heavily complex in relation to on chain scaling.

I honestly don't think Satoshi envisioned his/her/their creation being where it is now(especially in the given time frame) and I do take your points as mentioned above, and we need to be very aware of the consequences of what will happen if BTC becomes more centralised.

My theory is that Bitcoin, at least for a while, will continue to be king of the space for 3 reasons:

1. First Mover Advantage/Brand Recognition
2. Trading Pairs
3. Money moving in and out of the space, for the most part, goes through bitcoin.

Numbers 2 &3 will change over time and is doing already. I am no bitcoin maximalist and I hold both bitcoin and the bitcoin cash I received after the fork, so I have no horse in this race in terms of rivalry. That being said, it is my opinion that bitcoin will eventually lose its crown regardless of what happens. Whatever the outcome, the more decentralised a coin becomes, the better.

I would add as an afterthought, Satoshi is not here anymore. If he was still active in the development of bitcoin, I may have a different opinion, and then again, so may he. I would also probably have more support for bitcoin cash if the coins development team were actively running tests of the on chain scaling solutions mentioned above. Most of the time, that isn't what is actually happening. Anyway I digress.

PS. There are very few threads on this subject that don't dissolve into a Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash argument. with name calling and memes of Roger. I will say again, keep things decentralised! There is no point otherwise.