of course NSA could crack this stuff all along.
Any proof or is it just the tinfoil hat talking?
Pretty sure that applies to every post this user has ever made. I don't think I've ever witnessed them utter a word of sense in all 294 posts.
How would I become a part of this consensus?
Help secure the chain. Most people do that by running a non-mining full node. You'll then check every block conforms to the consensus rules which your chosen client enforces. The alternative is to become a miner. However, mining likely isn't an option unless you have a fairly significant sum of money you don't mind putting at risk, because you'd have to buy specialist hardware and return-on-investment is not guaranteed.
How is the incentive for mining going to be preserved after the coin creation is not enough? Can consensus create more coin for mining incentive? Without mining bitcoin will collapse, right?
Getting off-topic with this part, but the network will run purely on transaction fees after coin emission ceases.
In all of NSA history, the NSA has never made an algo public, where they didn't have the backdoor keys (DES, AES, ... nada one algo every, their entire mission is to tell corporate USA how to encrypt, but only strong enough so that the un-educated can't break ).
Both SECP256k1, and SHA256 are NSA, they are the backbone of BITCOIN
Now of course, the entire reason the BITCOIN PONZI scam has continued for 10+ Years, is that wink-wink, nod-nod, everybody knows the emperor has no clothes, but the prices continues to rise
This is common human trait, but when bitcoin does go down, then the facts will become common knowledge
SHA-256 is the hash, or trap-door function that is used for mining, and obfuscation of public-keys
Secp256k1 is the elliptic-curve used by bitcoin to generate public-keys, from private-keys, and message verification used in transactions.
The so called block-chain, is just what we call a linked-list in computer science, 70 year old tech nowadays.
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Consensus in BITCOIN comes form the 51% rule in the Satoshi white-paper, it says' that so long 51% or more of the miners are running the same software, then there is consensus, of course if +51% collude, then fairness is lost. China OWNS +67% of all bitcoin mining, China could order all bitcoin miners in China anytime they wish to all run the same software, supplied by the CCP-PBOC. This will happen in time. China also make +90% of all ASIC-GPU miners on earth, which all calls home, thus in reality CHINA owns all crypto mining on earth.
Lot's people all over the world run node, and full-nodes, which process the block-chain. Consensus rules are applied here to follow the rules, the assumption is that +51% of those running a full-node, are using the same software consensus rules.
Most important is that MINERS make BLOCKS, thus they're really in charge of the 'consensus', because they decide what goes into the block, thus the miners in CHINA could easily black-list any address, where the IMF doesn't have a KYC for that high-value address.
Because CHINA has had more than 51% of the mining for years, it can be said that consensus is an urban myth propagated by pumpers and bullshitters. Everybody knows CHINA owns BITCOIN, but so long as they're getting rich, it goes un-said. But be certain when the plug is pulled, all our HODL-ers will become "China Haters" over-night.