You have a very good point in that the better technology not always wins, when you have technologies that are competing for the same space the one that wins is usually the one that has the better marketing team.

There is also another part, ease of access. Take HD-DVD vs Blue Ray, both very similar tecnologies that were fighting for dominance in the same space. There is one thing that separates these however, one was included natively with the companies gaming console and the other you had to buy an add on. Blue Ray won, however I do not buy or rent ether, I prefer to watch things online.

I believe that bitcoin is going to be in trouble in the long term should it not fix the problems that plague it, even if it is not going away anytime soon. All this depends on how much real adoption it gets in the next few years. Nowadays it is no longer the only currency, and two of the things that are on the bitcoin.org website are not as true as they where when it started.