Changing the mining algorithm is referred to as the “nuclear” option for a reason.

You say “the government” will move against Bitcoin, but there are many governments. Many regions. And Bitcoin mining is very distributed and becoming increasingly distributed. So it would require many governments to move against Bitcoin miners, and become an active attacker through running the mining hardware themselves, in which case the defence strategy I mentioned could be deployed and users would once again, for some time, become the miners.

What I want to impress upon you is that Bitcoin has many defences and adaptations. Its distributed, decentralized architecture makes it very hard to attack and its incentive structure makes it very attractive to support it instead of attacking it.

If you’ve read the two articles in the series: why nobody can stop bitcoin and why everything that should hurt bitcoin only makes it stronger you’ll get the gist of these ideas.

I’m very glad you are enjoying the articles.