re: Bitcoin faces biggest threat yet: a miner takeover

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I doubt the smartest cryptographers in the world are focusing their efforts on Bitcoins, or any other cryptocurrency.

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Unless you consider Ralph Merkle an average cryptographer, you'd be wrong.

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Bitcoin mining is not a cooperative endeavor. It is a competitive endeavor. There are winners and losers. Advances in cryptography will never eliminate the competitive nature of mining. There will still be winners and losers, and economies of scale will play a key role in determining who wins and who loses.

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I really wish you would seek to understand instead of seek to dismiss. As I just told you, it's being worked on in a concept Peter Todd describes as "tree chains" where verification of transactions is done by everyone running any kind of node (including SPV clients). This would remove the possibility of a 51% attack while decentralizing the distribution of bitcoin core nodes.

And there are many others working on different problems that will evolve blockchain technology. Greg Maxwell and Adam Back have figured out a way to two-way peg cryptocurrencies which will all but eliminate alt-coins and allow for rapid testing and development in bitcoin. Tree chains gained popularity as a critique over the necessary centralization of bitcoin core nodes that would arise if side chains were implemented into the protocol.