Re: What happens if the cryptography of Bitcoin gets cracked?

Or what would happen if improved cryptography comes along, how would the protocol deal with this? Would a layer on top of the current protocol be enough to patch it up or will Bitcoin die?

Bitcoin is an open protocol, everything can be changed, patched , and so on.
Ultimatively, if sha256 gets to the point where its useless, bitcoin would have to switch algo, making all asics useless.

Would be a fun thing to see, also becose the price would have a major dip, where u could buy, knowing there will be just as powerfull rebound.

Open source means that individual users can make changes to what the do, but for the protocall to be chanced 1/2 of the miners would need to accept the change.

Not exactly.

It's not just up to the miners, it's up to merchants too. 100% of miners could go with a hard fork change that could be incompatible with what merchants call bitcoin.

Or, say, 20% of miners and merchants fork to a change and start using that ...would simply be another version of bitcoin but if incompatible, would cause a lot of confusion if both were called bitcoin.

If merchants were to try to change the protocol then no TX would get confirmed if the miners did not agree