Most realistic view

I too would be tempted to dump my holdings of ETF coin in a contentious fork. But that doesn't guarantee ETF coin will lose.

With the current crop of bitcoin holders, it's become clear that many could be convinced to dump in favour of ETF coin. And the ETFs and TCs themselves hold a lot of bitcoin. If they all dumped, I think it'd be a high hurdle to jump.

And that's my point. I think there is a scenario where ETF coin would seemingly win the day and many would say "bitcoin has failed". But actually there is a strong chance that, even if the other fork coin didn't rise like a phoenix, the ETF coin itself would be fixed later.

All that said, it's possible you're right and that scenario won't play out: in the unlikely event that ETFs and TCs were to risk trying such a thing, that might not be enough to push a dodgy protocol change. Although you seem much more certain that it won't play out - and I think that's a weakness, because if it did happen you'll be like a Sardaukar confronted with defeat.

For me, bitcoin integrating with tradfi was inevitable. People still have the option to create their own utxos should they need to, whether government approved or not. So I wouldn't necessarily call that corruption. The majority will use bitcoin like they use the internet.

Devs scared to meege protocol changes for fear of backlash and/or people distorting others' sense of the consensus for such changes - that I could believe. Although I wouldn't be surprised if Simplicity came along, got activated with minimal fuss, stunning CTV/etc supporters. Because people are confusing being loud on twitter for consensus. Maybe nothing is being activated because things are being worked on they need time to cook. (This is all speculation on my behalf - I have no idea.)

But my main point here is the potential for corruption of the protocol itself - for the door to slightly open for something like actual transaction censorship due to a protocol change. And that maybe such a thing wouldn't be bitcoin's death knell

Haha... there may be some truth to this... maybe not Bitcoin itself, but some influential Bitcoiners

I'd agree. I think that that is the more probable scenario.

But at the same time, I can imagine that if in the immediate aftermath of the fork, if forkcoin was worth more, then it wouldn't take long for network effects to make that insurmountable.

Diehard bitcoiners would lose financially and struggle with it immensely - they'd probably resemble BCashers - when the correction action could be to uncorrupt forkcoin.

It could be anything. My guess is that bitcoin has many contentious forks to come.

I have another theory that bitcoin will never ossify and get corrupted and then fixed repeatedly over time, kind of like the rise and fall of civilisations.

ETFs are centralisation. So are BTC Treasury companies. They are not going to stop - increasing institutional custody is now firmly in place. BTC use as an un KYCed p2p MoE is now almost non existent.

My point is that while corporate interests may win the in short term, even to the point of getting their way in a contentious fork, in the longer term there is a possibility to reverse course.

When the effects of a particular change are in the future and highly theoretical, it's easy for people to be misled. When a change fixes something tangibly experienced right now, then it's much harder to manipulate the market.