#question : can the Blockstream BitcoinCore team shut down or alter the bitcoin Protocol, if they want?
Discussion
It's a consensus mechanism Majority vote wins.. And bitcoin is so beautiful that this has been tried and failed.
Yes that’s the problem: consensus. So they can shut it down if they want to my understanding. it is up to Blockstream investors then, right?
No. The protocol of bitcoin is well alive and the world is running the software so they can't they would need to shut everyone and everything down.. like the electricity in the world.. at this point there is no point in trying to stop bitcoin it only makes sense to buy a few miners and start mining so you can reap the mining rewards
Changes to the code need to be proposed via a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP).
But even then the change needs to be agreed by all devs before committing the code to Bitcoin Core itself.
And even then, the new Bitcoin Core software needs to be adopted by the majority of the miners worldwide before it is live.