Unless and until the asset and entire supply chain you are using is also somehow trustless, which I admit is contrived, but also interesting to think about.
>Bitcoin may die and not mean a single thing for libertarianism, because IMO it's success depends on technical implementation, not ideological barriers.
100% agree. The technical details of bitcoin's implementation are taken up (despite being a red herring) by the author as an indictment of libertarian principles themselves, probably the reason he focuses on the oldest and most technologically outdated crypto out of the major ones.
You're describing a cognitive bias wherein you would be turned off from a monetarily beneficial decision because of the foregone gains you would've had had you made the decision to enter the game earlier. This won't lead to the collapse of bitcoin, it just means that those who will profit from mining now and in the future are those who won't fall prey to that sort of thinking.
I understand were you are coming from with a comment like that, but I would argue that the large majority of people read about and get emotionally invested in news stories that have no impact on their lives. Take, for example, the stories of refugees being taken in by European countries, and those of Donald Trump's view of healthcare. It's nearly physically impossible to be affected by those two things. We can think of plenty of such 'pairs' of stories that people get interested in which it's impossible to be affected by both. And beyond what marginal information you get to inform your voting preferences via those stories, it is pretty pointless to get invested in them.