Fact check this because it came from a You tube video but
China controls 70% of the block chain
It's locked at a trillion dollar industry vs 12 trillion for gold and many time more for equities...
Another brand could render it useless...
Annnnnddd last but not least...the government or CB can stomp it out or create their own(which they will in less than 2-3 years)
About 65% of the hashrate / mining power is in China. However majority of bitcoin is actually owned in the US. All Chinese miners could "theoretically" perform an attack on the network if more than 51% or all network miners decide to perform a specific action to revers or change transactions. That is extremely costly and near impossible to do. More importantly, many miners "located in China" have moved their operations/ and their bitcoin outside of China, because BTC is cracked down on in China, and those folk find it as a way to be liberated from government control with a decentralized currency.
As far as governments/ CBs, I don't even know what a "alternative" central digital currency even means. Our USD is already digital. I mean I have probably a $50 in my wallet that I have not touched in 3 years. All my stock market exchanges, bank accounts, credit cards, spending is all digital already. I never see what my dollar looks like. When the Federal reserve "prints" dollars, it's all digital numbers. That does not make it an alternative.
Unless the federal bank produces a currency that is : 1. Finite (they can never ever be more than 21million bitcoins) 2. Decentralized (they produce the program, but the transactions are verified by the public). 3. Does not involve any middle man to perform a transaction and can be stored easily). 4. Build a network as large as what BTC has now. If they do all that, then I am not sure what their incentive would ever be.
The whole point of BTC is that it is not controlled by any government or central bank, so they can never in reality create a central alternative, because that is not an alternative. It is a peer-to-peer network that you can be part of if you want right now. It is just what we have today.
As far as other brands, I can tell you right now that there are already hundreds of other cryptocurrencies out there. The source code for BTC is open. You can even make your own now. The value of BTC comes from the humongous peer to peer network that supports it, that just is getting larger every day thanks to the higher prices and higher involvement by major institutions. You can participate in that network right now and mine it yourself, but that would be probably not very profitable depending on your PC.
I still think it is the best "risky" long term bet at the moment. Definitely do not put anything in it that you are not willing to lose entirely. I chose 5% to me and will ride the next 10-15 years by dollar cost averaging every month.