CMV. Changing POW algo is pretty much impossible.

Tldr: handwavey argument that bitcoin could just switch hashing algorithm to punish insubordinate miners is bullshit. Change my view.

I see lots of people saying that we could just change the mining algorithm lately. No, we couldn't.

Any other algo would have only limited amount of deployed hardware. Which means state level actors could spend just a few million to own 51%. They'd be waiting for just such an opportunity. Their goal is to seed distrust into Bitcoin which will effectively reduce it to a shadow of its real self or even kill it entirely.

Also, it's incredibly difficult to change as evidenced by inability to do a simple-ish hard fork to 2MB blocks. And this change is essentially asking miners to write down their sizeable investment into sha256 gear. Many of them cannot afford that.