Wow this has to be the worst article of bitcoin I have read...
Author has no idea of how bitcoin mining and the security of the system works... Bitcoin is not cheap! Proof-of-work network is intentionally expensive
The security of bitcoin is competing against other industries which are trillions of dollars in security, when you compare how cheap it is to secury efficiently the network. Bitcoin IS the cheapest solution out there, and even in the near future mining will always be profitable at the margins. The best players will always be profitable as we have reached Moore's Law already. Therefore your profits will be in cutting down cost by reducing heating and using similar technologies as is used in the nuclear industry for cooling down. The same goes with finding areas where electricity is already going to be wasted so think of Isle of Man, or Iceland etc... Still bitcoin will be securing a whole lot more then just its own transfer of value, but lots of stocks and assets that are like Colored coins.
Fiat conversion makes Bitcoin transactions even more expensive
There are so many other solutions to this problem, that could be token based solutions (where you have real assets by a company like Tether, Bitreserve etc...) be able to trade BTC to fiat with extremely low fee's. Fees where no one could be able to compete against, no matter how big the bank is, you simply can't compete against BTC type of fees.
Intermediaries provide more value add than just handling payment
Yes as of right now they are the best alternative, but there are already solutions right now that are using P2P along with central servers to reduce the load of servers, whenever possible. So remember P2P can always simply improve and reduce cost wherever possible, but it is not totally necessary to decentralize everything at least no initially. It can always be done gradually, until all the infrastructure is built to make it possible.
The main point that this conversation was not even possible before, and now it is. Their days are counted, where they can be able to get away with the sort of rates they are offering. You are going to be seeing bitcoin type of apps, help reduce fees so much that some of these industries will simply use BTC to save themselves lots of money. At the end of the day, consumers will get higher quality products at lower prices, and the bad players in the industry will need to either change to another industry or simply join the bandwagon, help decentralize services and essentially offer services. There is always a need for services, but no more exploiting the consumer and making the product. Which is what the current advertising model does, (yes its what works best right now) but this is not always going to be true in the future. There is a valid alternative that will slowly gain the network effect, and that is the only thing that the current technologies have. A true massive network effect, along with the law on their side, governments and pretty much brainwashing from state schools that the current status quo is what works best. However, Bitcoin disruptive technology is 100 times better in every single possible way than the current incumbents its just a matter of time before the educational efforts actually prove this to the masses by simply showing products that work ten times better than what they are used to having.