So smart to see so little. How are changes to the protocol made? They are voted on by the miners. It only takes a few THash miners to drive the difficulty so high everybody else gets squeezed out. So when a few control a majority of the network, it will be they that decide what BIPs get approved or not.  And when those few miners decide they want 3% of every transaction there won't be a damn thing you can do about it. So much for a decentralized currency. This was your last chance to keep Bitcoin in the hands of the people, because once those ASICs start rolling out it will be too late. Hopefully Bitcoin 2.0 will address this issue (amongst others).