Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

I’ve been reading about extreme solar events, especially the so-called Miyake-type incidents, and it got me wondering how Bitcoin would behave if something on that scale hit today. I’m not talking about a normal geomagnetic storm or the kind of interference that causes brief satellite issues, but a genuinely massive event capable of disrupting power grids, communications systems, and long-distance networks for days or even longer.

If large parts of the planet suddenly lost electricity or if the global Internet backbone became fragmented, would the network simply pause and pick up later, or would it split into disconnected regions, each producing its own chain until everything comes back online? And if that happened, how would those chains reconcile once communication is restored? I’m also curious what would happen to the practical side of things. Wallets offline for long periods, seed backups, miners suddenly dropping, satellites affected, radio links struggling. Would Bitcoin survive as a coherent system, or only as scattered islands of nodes waiting to reconnect?

I’m not trying to push a doomsday scenario; I’m genuinely interested in how resilient the protocol and the ecosystem really are if the surrounding infrastructure takes a major hit. If anyone here has technical insight on grid vulnerabilities, network fragmentation, mining dynamics under extreme conditions, or historical precedent from smaller storms, I’d like to hear your thoughts.

How would you expect Bitcoin to behave in the middle of a truly major solar storm, and in the days and weeks that follow?

Orionp99

If we become witnesses of a Miyake type of event then trust me, none of us will even think about Bitcoin.  Breaking the chain of modern life means almost nothing works any more.  Not even the food chains.  The world is going to stop until it is solved.  If it is solved.  In the situation of survival, which this is, you will care for your life more than you would care whether Bitcoin or Fiat still exists.

Here is what I believe.  If such an event happens then no body will put any Trust in to some body else to trade their Bitcoin because it will look suspicious.  I would not Trust some body who says they want to give me Bitcoin while the grid is down.

If the grid is down globally then the Blockchain will stop working at all because no Blocks will be mined.  I believe the first Transactions will sit in the Mempool until electricity is back on in enough places for Mining farms to resume their activity or there would be a consensus that the original valid Chain resumes from the last Block mined before the event.  With no Blocks being mined any more and the Difficulty sitting at such highs, any body who will run Bitcoin by them selves will have about zero chance of continuing the Chain unless the first one to connect back to the grid is a giant Mining farm.  But that would be an incredible risk.  I presume every body who is hit by a major solar storm will be very careful about when to connect to the grid again so that they do not damage more of their elecronics in their house or work.

The continuity in the existence of Bitcoin lies in he presences of power supply, whereby the internet remains functional without disruption, and anything causing disruption will make the entire system to halt, until everything is put in place. The human existence has grown so high, that power supply and internet connectivity is now part of life, without which can lead to increase in death rate worldwide. If things gets that bad, the interest in Bitcoin will drop rapidly, as everyone will be concerned with survival of the catastrophic event around the world. If there be segmentation between regions, Bitcoin will drop below expectations and will be used by the side not affected by such event.

Major solar Storm can affect Bitcoin process but it will not destroy Bitcoin.  It may interfere with Bitcoin transactions in several area affected by the interference like unable to send transaction due to internet connection problems or power supply outages, but it is only on that level since Bitcoin transaction is dependent on internet and electricity to be sent.  There might be an indirect affect on the price of BTC due to some negative speculation since disturbance is happening that may cause FUD to the holder.

The other effect is dependent on how long this interference will stay.  The longer the effect of the interference is the more devastating it is for Bitcoin economy since the infrastructure needed for Bitcoin operation might not be available for a long time. But everything will be back to normal after the effect wears out since this Solar Storm effect is only temporary and infrastracture can be repaired.

Okay, so even if all the communication satellites went down, we would still have submarine cables for communication between continents.  But, if those went down too, and we could only communicate within continents, then it would definitely cause network fragmentation and chain splits.

Bitcoin nodes in North America would lose contact with those in Europe, Asia, and so on.  Each group, assuming they have enough electricity, would keep mining using the last shared block, making their own separate, local version of the blockchain.  Thats what we call "a fork".  Once the links are back up (maybe weeks or months later?), these chains would have to reconcile.  I believe the protocol rule is that the longest chain wins (the one with the most Proof-of-Work added up).  This means that the group (or region) with the most juice and hash power wins.

For normal and extreme situations, it is possible there is a plan for it already.

I will to think that is an extreme situation like that, every thing will simply take a pause, and when things get back up again, things will just continue from they paused. That is, any amount of bitcoin you had stored or kept, will remain same when things get back up. We will have to the professional who can fix the situation, getting the internet back up.

We haven't experienced the Miyake type solar flare in modern times so it would be difficult to predict how well our electronics would do on such events.
The good thing is we are already monitoring the solar flares so we would have some warning before it strikes. There are researches that shows its not the solar flare itself that would be dangerous but the other particles that hits earth within a few days so we might have enough time to unplug everything at least for some days. It would have effect to long grids and transformers and home equipment might be safe as we use earthing in multiple places.
If such catastrophe strikes, we may need to unplug every servers including nodes of bitcoin. Even if a small percentage of bitcoin node survives, we could just plug them in to keep the chain going after everything goes normal.

Such events are so volatile you can not prepare an Internet only Currency for it.  How can Bitcoin be prepared?

If every body knew how to broadcast Bitcoin Transactions using radio waves, satellites et cetera it would maybe be different.  Although I am not sure how even solar radios kept in Faraday cages would work if the grid is down together with all antennas and every thing else.  But preparing Bitcoin means preparing the population for it and the population is not even ready to accept that Bitcoin is not a Scam yet.

Humanity is not ready for a major solar storm.  There are no expectations for Bitcoin to be.

What would happen to the BTC inside your cold wallet, when you don't have electricity? Nothing. The same applies to all the Bitcoin nodes and cold wallets, when there's a big electricity outage. All the Blockchain info would remain safe in the Bitcoin nodes and they will start working when the electricity comes back. The BTC miners and the nodes cannot work without electricity, and you can't more your crypto funds without electricity as well. I think that sudden huge electricity outage would cause the miners and nodes to stop working for a while, but the amount of transactions on the network would drop as well, so there won't be any huge increase of transaction fees and confirmation time.