Or what would happen if improved cryptography comes along, how would the protocol deal with this? Would a layer on top of the current protocol be enough to patch it up or will Bitcoin die?
Bitcoin is an open protocol, everything can be changed, patched , and so on.
Ultimatively, if sha256 gets to the point where its useless, bitcoin would have to switch algo, making all asics useless.
Would be a fun thing to see, also becose the price would have a major dip, where u could buy, knowing there will be just as powerfull rebound.
Open source means that individual users can make changes to what the do, but for the protocall to be chanced 1/2 of the miners would need to accept the change.
Not exactly.
It's not just up to the miners, it's up to merchants too. 100% of miners could go with a hard fork change that could be incompatible with what merchants call bitcoin.
Or, say, 20% of miners and merchants fork to a change and start using that ...would simply be another version of bitcoin but if incompatible, would cause a lot of confusion if both were called bitcoin.
If merchants were to try to change the protocol then no TX would get confirmed if the miners did not agree
Correct. Everyone has to agree. Not just 50% of miners.
