It is hard to imagine bitcoin disappearing unless the technology fails. Bitcoin as of today is safe, very cheap to use, no registration is required, it is instant, and it is transparent albeit pseudonymous. It benefits from the network effect, essentially making it impossible for other crypto-currencies to take its place. Naturally you'd expect more and more people to discover bitcoin, and more and more services to be built to facilitate its users. At the same time governments will try to regulate it. Because of its decentralized nature, there's nothing any government can do to regulate the bitcoin protocol itself. Rather they can make it difficult to buy bitcoins through exchanges. They may also make it harder for businesses to accept bitcoin as payment. We've seen attempts of all this in the US, as well as in Russia and China.