Rather than talking about hypotheticals, it might be better to discuss the actual problems Bitcoin currently faces. The development team for the most-widely-use

Rather than talking about hypotheticals, it might be better to discuss the actual problems Bitcoin currently faces. The development team for the most-widely-used implementation are mostly in the employ of a particular startup. That development team are refusing to raise Bitcoin's maximum block size – presumably because it would be contrary to that startup's interests – despite that inevitably resulting in the strangulation of the currency, as it introduces artificial scarcity to the number of transactions that can be processed. That would be bad enough by itself, but how they've handled disagreement is worse. There have been several attempts to fork the primary implementation, producing alternative implementations which support a higher block size. Official bitcoin forums have now banned discussion of these forks, leading to an acrimonious community split. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905118 Bitcoin doesn't need an outside infiltration to bring it down. Its own leadership are sealing its fate.