The problem I see coming is if BCU breaks off, it will become an altcoin. These miners can mine all the blocks they want, if the greater community doesn’t trust their developers, doesn’t want an altcoin, and isn’t buying BCU, it is irrelevant by design.

The market will decide who wins, and anybody who is not a miner wants to stick with Core and their chain. The miners are one thing, the market is something else. The miners might win a battle, but they would lose that war. They should keep that in mind.

Without those miners, BTC would definitely take a hit, but the Core developers could then quickly move to a 2MB upgrade, and get SegWit and The Lightning Network approved, creating greater Bitcoin functionality, from a trusted group of developers, and an incredible upside in off-chain scalability an on-chain approach would be hard pressed to match. All without the centralization and control of the miners.

Users will follow anyone who is going to implement SegWit. The market is sold on this concept as a boon to Bitcoin functionality. BTU has not done a very good sales job at all open their position. Scaling away form miners will hurt mining, but it will let Bitcoin reach its full potential.

BTU needs to sell their mined Bitcoins to a market. I’m not seeing much of a market for BTU, outside of the miners and BTU investors, themselves.

The greater community will not follow the miners, who are primarily looking to turn a buck in Bitcoin. They will follow Core, who is looking after the greater good. Miners will lose that tug of war. It has become clear that BTU developers cannot replace BTC developers, but BTC miners can be replaced. There are plenty of people around the world who want that job, and can do it just as well.

Anyone who thinks the market doesn’t see through that is fooling themselves.