The amount of electricity that miners are paying for is so large that they will most likely shut down their hashing operations if the exchanges have closed down which will reduce the difficulty (in two weeks).
After two weeks if the problem hasn't been worked out then everyone is basically going to walk away and the Bitcoin experiment will be declared a failure.
more like, miners do not trade on public exchanges. instead they do private trades (otc style)
for instance VC's hand miners FIAT to pay the electric. and the miners hand bitcoins to the VC as their returns. that way funds dont actually touch public exchanges..
even things like bitpay received 30+million in fiat a couple years ago and they used the fiat to pay customers and gave the bitcoin to VC's, without needing to touch exchanges as often as you would think.
secondly. if miners are losing funds due to VC's not accepting their transactions (due to threat of orphaning.. then miners would downgrade to mitigate the risk of orphans or go offline temporarily to conserve costs.. resulting in a reduction of the difficulty if the stalemate lasts too long.. its not an instant killing off of bitcoin its just a re-organisation of power.
in short miners wont push the boundary of the 1mb limit.. even if they have the setting in their client as a buffer, they wont physically make blocks bigger than 1 block unless they are sure their blocks wont get orphaned or not accepted by the community..
so even if 75% of the community had the 2mb setting as a buffer. miners wont shoot themselves in the foot, they would just plod along at 0.99mb until the time is right.
any miner that went full retard and tried to force a fork, even at 75% would eventually get their attempt orphaned unless they had more hash power than any other miner to ensure they kept beating other miners to win the blockheight race.
in short the 2mb setting is a harmless buffer setting thats never used, unless
1. miners are secure that their attempts to make bigger blocks wont evaporate into orphans
2. they had enough hash power to tip the scales in their favour without loss
3. they had community relaying support to ensure their blocks got relayed.
4. their not mentally retarded to risk more processing time, orphans or going offline which would be 3 slaps in the face, for just being to eager.
instead they would wait it out until the time was right. even if gavins 'few week' predicted timescale elapses, miners just wont move forward until they are sure.
this is also the reason miners dont upgrade their mining software as often. as they like to let the community test out new software before risking using it on a pool.
if you think that accepting more transactions(fees) is more important compared to long term regular income.. you are wrong.
currently fee's average 0.4btc total per block. if you think they are going to let in another 100 transactions (1.05mb instead of 0.99mb) just to get 0.42btc while risking their opportunities for multiple long term earnings of 12.5btc.. well im guessing you prefer the conspiracy theory more than logic theory.
some miners may be mentally impaired and try pushing beyond the 1mb limit prematurely, but they will find their attempts cost them if they dont have all the other factors ready to protect them and the community, and so the are just shooting themselves in the foot and only hurting themselves in the end. and so eventually they will adjust down to start earning again and wait for a better time to adjust up again, or the rest of the community will grow to allow miners to move forward sooner.. or the miner will just go full retard and mine anyway at a loss. for no good reason. and the rest of us just orphan off those attempts
