That's the thing - there's no "comprehensive and conclusive" answer to these arguments, just a never-ending parade of the same discussions repeated ad infinitum.

As for breaking the cryptography, it's been nearly 10 years now, with all the code in the public domain and massive incentives to find a flaw.

That's why some people call Bitcoin "anti-fragile" since it seems to get stronger the more it's attacked.

But of course it's theoretically possible that the NSA / GCHQ / FAPSI will (or has already) broken the cryptography. What happens then? Do miners stop until the flaw is fixed? Do they roll back to before the compromise? Does the blockchain fork into a new, fixed coin?

I guess that's the beauty of financial assets defined by open-source software. Bugs and exploits happen, they get fixed, and we move ahead on a new version.