"First, no "altcoin" even existed over half a decade ago"

Namecoin was the first altcoin and launched in early 2011. I'll respond to the rest of this later.

Regarding the market telling me things... it tells me things in how it has built the infrastructure. There is a reason that bitcoin is the most widely used pair at exchanges. I don't decide which coin people are going to stick with, but for whatever reason, bitcoin has been crowned king and not given up that crown despite literally thousands of altcoins claiming to be better than bitcoin in different ways over the course of roughly 8 years. That could certainly change at some point, but for now, it is what it is. The fact that bitcoin is merely software that can be upgraded and updated at any time likely is a big part of this. What bitcoin lacks today, it could have as a feature tomorrow, ya know?

Bitcoin doesn't have to break into mainstream as a payment option to make it a wildly successful investment. I wrote previously about endowments moving in, pension funds will be next. They will take a 1-3% allocation in bitcoin because it is not controlled by any government and it is not correlated with any other financial assets. It makes for a great portfolio diversification tool. These funds collectively control trillions of dollars.

With that being the only driving force, bitcoin could still reach new highs even if it has nothing else going for it, though it likely will have other advantages as well.

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