I think you haven't gone far enough down the rabbit hole. Bitcoin is ONLY it's people, it's consensus among the nodes run by users. 

Bitcoin is nothing but those individuals choosing software and running the code that is Bitcoin. If you're not doing it, if you're apathetic about it, you're relying on others and trusting their notion of the rules and the existing consensus. 

Bitcoin is us. Run by us. 

I agree with Lopp on this. The greatest threat to Bitcoin is a future of mainstream acceptance and capture of the ideology and changing what people think Bitcoin is and how it does it. If enough minds are changed and enough of them are running nodes, Bitcoin can be whatever we/they want.