Bitcoin Forum

95% of miners are suddenly offline.
Be it a new law or an EMP strike. What would happen to bitcoin?  ???

Value would increase? With a sudden cap on "incoming" currency, I think the economic value would substantially increase.

Confirmation of transactions would take longer untill we hit the next difficulty adjustment. After that difficulty would be decreased. I am not 100% certain if there is a maximum the difficulty can change per adjustment, but I suspect there is.

I don't think so, since it would be bad PR for Bitcoins. Transaction would take longer to confirm, which would really hurt.
But the difficulty is adjusted every two weeks, so the effect on the network would be gone after that period, but still bad PR.

Some are already down IMO. Hence difficulty is going to drop ;D

I'm still a somewhat novice to the whole process, but do transaction confirmations require miner interaction?

Yes, you broadcast your transaction (TX) to all nodes you are connected to. These check if your TX is valid and safe them in memory, if they also meet the relay criteria they are broadcasted to all other nodes they know. This will - for regular transactions - result in the whole network knowing about your TX in a few seconds. The miners are those that take these TX and put them into a block. Once your TX is in a block it has its first confirmation. Each block after the first will increase the number of confirmations by 1.

The picture shows the number of TX my node knowns about. If they suddently drop a block was found and confirmed those you no longer see on the graph.

https://i.imgur.com/qXBcLcv.png

I am sure the prices will go straight up, as the sellers would decrease as well.

We'd feel a great disturbance in the Blockchain, as if millions of miners suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced  :-[

This is not true. The difficulty adjusts every 2016 blocks so that the previous 2016 blocks would have been mined in two weeks had the difficulty be what it was changed to. Assuming that 95% of the miners go offline exactly as the difficulty chances and ignoring variance, and assuming that no additional miners come online or go offline then it would take 40 weeks for the difficulty to adjust.

However the likely result of the miners going offline is that the TX fees would skyrocket which would entice other miners to go online as the EV of mining would increase.

Does this mean confirmation will take about 3-4 hours?

On average a confirmation would take 200 minutes, yes.

That'd be a hassle I guess. Zero-confirmation services would then explode, correct?

EMP only tends to affect "live" electronics seriously. Bearing in mind that there's probably a lot of 1st gen stuff and GPUs sitting around unplugged at the moment, many of those would probably come back online in event of a huge hashrate drop.

Also I think even a severe "carrington event" would only impact half the planet, even if it managed to zap US and China at the same time (midday over pacific) then Europe may escape severe effects, so I think the maximum that would get taken out is about 70%.... ~30 minute block confirms for a while.

Most EMP strikes are trivial to defend against with a properly grounded Faraday cage. Many datacenters are protected against EMP's as well.

I suspect there would be more demand for offchain services but at the same time 51% attacks and other possible attacks would be easier, thus requiring for more initial confirmations to mitigate the effect.

IMHO the best action would be to reactivate old mininghardware and only spend btc if you absolutly have to. If I had to make or accept a TX, Id require more confirmations than now. Not sure about how many, probably over 10. A deal would take over a day under those conditions, even longer with escrow.

That is still a lot  :-\

That is impossible to happen and even if it would, nothing impotant would happen ;), new miners would rush for free money.

So you are saying there is an equivalent of 95% of todays hashingpower somewhere in a warehouse just waiting for this to happen?

Nope, im saying if mining would be 95% easier new miners would pop quicker than you can think of :)

No. I just asked a hypothetical question.

Probably not. The nodes will eventually delete the unconfirmed transactions from their memory pool so accepting an unconfirmed transaction would be much riskier as it would be much easier to double spend a transaction.

No, off the chain transactions would explode and alts would start to get adopted at higher rates.

If this were to happen, I am certain that we would never get to see the theoretical 40 week wait till the next difficulty adjustment. ASIC factories would ramp up production (of current proven designs) in response to demand and quickly make up for most of the loss of hashing power.

lol. price would fall since those miners would get coins much cheaper then right now and bitcoin would become more vulnerable to get attacked. But since would be worth less, would be also less profit for the attackers.

True, I suspect that as well. I however doubt that it would be enough to reach "100%" again.

If it would be "easy" to gather as much hashingpower as currently is around a 51% attack would be "easy" as well. I doubt recovery would be a matter of days, weeks or even months are more likely.

I can live with 20 minute confirmation times, so recovery to 50% is good enough for me.

People might wait until it was worth the cost of electricity, but you might see a lot of previously "obsolete" mining equipment go back online.

You are probably correct about off chain transactions, however I disagree with alts being used more as they would likely have similar levels of security (there is no reason why only bitcoin miners and not altcoin miners would shut down)

Tough to say - any event that took out 95% of miners would be a global catastrophe which, generally, should spike the value of "flight to safety" assets such as gold and silver and ... Bitcoin?

Best hedge against a 95% global meltdown is several years supply of canned food and bottled water... gold and silver probably only useful up to 70% meltdown.

No, they wouldn't unless the difficulty changes, which could take months.

Why are you assuming all alts use PoW as a security mechanism?

Price will rise for sure when there isn't too much BTC (miners stop) . demand on bitcoin will rise & eventually price too :o right ?

Until difficulty re-adjusts less bitcoins will be minted which could drive price up but the fear from this loss in security and instability of the network could create a panic sell driving BTC price down as well.

It is hard to say what will happen if that event occurs with the BTC price. This is a completely unlikely hypothetical discussion however.

Even if an altcoin was using something other then PoW then it would still be similarly affected. PoS coins still need a minimal amount of computing power to "stake" and it is not realistic to think that only ASIC's would be affected by some event that would cause 95% of the mining network to suddenly go offline

Fair point but the question would be which currencies security model would be far more effected by 95% of the PoW or 95% of the PoS/DPoS/ect... being removed?

I would posit that Bitcoin would be far weaker under said conditions from a 51% attack and thus you would likely see more people adopt alts in such an event much to my chagrin.

Since difficulty would adjust the amount of new currency would be the same. The network would be less secure and therefore the price would likely fall.

I would think the price would decline as the network would become much less secure (by a factor of 20) and it would take much longer (and more expensive) to get a transaction to confirm.

Whats the 40 day wait? If it doesnt retarget in 40 days it forces a difficulty change? I was not aware that such a scheme is implemented.

There is.  The difficulty may not increase or decrease more than 4-fold.  If the hashrate drop occurs when we're more than about 400 blocks from a difficulty change and the hashrate stays down then we'll endure a few months of 8-block days (1 block every 3 hours on average) before retargeting to grind through 2 months of 45-minute blocks.

In its 6-year life Bitcoin has only once experienced a full 4-fold difficulty change.

i'd simply dust off and plug back in my 60 Ghs miner and watch the btc roll in. right now it is not worth the electric it draws.
but of course there are scores of others who would do the same, the question is essentially moot.

I'm not sure why you post such folly, I dont believe you are looking to better understand anything or honestly care what would happen. More likely you are working on building your account rank and activity so you can rent your sig out or even sell the account to trolls. I can understand that you are reduced to actually starting your own pointless threads because there are so many shadow accounts like yourself, posting drivel, that it can be hard to find much to interact with...they are all making shit posts and the forum becomes a wasteland.

I wonder what would happen if a large number of bitcointalk troll/shill/puppet accounts were suddenly forced to shut down?

Well this is a silly question that was asked over and over in the past. Start using search.
An EMP to hit out 95% of the miners, would need to be an EMP around the whole world thus wiping out 100% of the Miners and everything else. That would create chaos in which no currency would matter at all.
As far as all other things go, there is no way that someone could force 95% of the Miners to shut down. There are just no possible means of achieving this.

So what would happen doesn't really matter, because it won't happen.
~Lauda

Are you sure about the difficulty not being able to decrease by more then 75% in one adjustment? I know that one of the early adjustments almost was 4x and satoshi mentioned that it was close to the limit, however I have never seen anything regarding there being any limits as to how much the difficulty can go down.

Nice to know someone's paying attention. :)

Well, certainly the intent is for a difficulty change to be limited between 25% and 400%.  Here's the code (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/f2ada138c28bf6b4f4a668c4ab60b55d124c9823/src/pow.cpp#L53-L56) in the reference client responsible for this.  Technically, a difficulty rise might ever so slightly exceed 400% due to some rounding (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/934b153a2caba4071a614e5b3ef40feeaff631d4/src/uint256.cpp#L281) which is done to keep block-header size down, but this won't be more than by about 1 part in 10 million and will not allow a breach of the 75%-drop limit.

Bitcoin's difficulty increased precisely 4-fold on 16th July, 2010 with block #68544.

Block #68543 (https://blockchain.info/block/0000000003dfbfa2b33707e691ab2ab7cda7503be2c2cce43d1b21cd1cc757fb) has a "bits" value of 0x1c05a3f4 (470131700 expressed in hexadecimal) where block #68544 (https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000519051eb5f3c5943cdbc176a0eff4e1fbc3e08287bdb76299b8e5c)'s bits value is 0x1c0168fd.  The bits value is a 32-bit compact representation of the 256-bit target (the value below which a block's hash must be for it to pass the proof-of-work requirement).  The corresponding target values are:
and
The target dropped precisely 4-fold here.  This corresponds to a 4-fold increase in difficulty from
to

This is almost certainly correct. It would be very unlikely that any event would knock out the vast majority (95%) of the mining network but not the internet (which is required in order for the miners to wish to continue to mine as without the internet they will have no way of broadcasting their blocks and no way of knowing what the latest block that has been mined is).

I would "accept" scenarios in which much smaller portions of the mining network are taken offline, but not 95%

A very interesting question indeed.

I've been pondering upon related issues here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=812863.0

...and also give my couple of cents in an article that handles the EMP/CME issue here:

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/hamradiocoin-crypto-via-radio-alternative-blockchain-channel/

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

Both me and a significant portion of scientists specialized in events related to Sun and the geomagnetic field would disagree.

It is instead a well known fact that a big CME will eventually blow the lights out of possibly whole continents.

I've been involved in a very high level team mapping the significance of this issue on a national level and I can assure you it's not some fringe theory. It's been taken very seriously on very high levels of governmental decision making.

Not that mining crypto currencies would be nearly the biggest problem should/when the scenario plays out. There's going to be plenty of much more urgent stuff to concentrate on.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

If this happen you have several possible scenarios.
From price goes sky high to price go to low or even price stay on where it will be in time of this.

Also interesting topic to discuss and sure this can happen someday.

He thing there is.
Seriously all rigs are scatter over the world not on one place.
If there were on one place you dont need EMP you can blow up with any explosive.

It would take several months I think for the remaining miners to find a new block as the difficulty would not adjust for some time until enough blocks are found.

This reminds me of the plot of a movie...Planet of the Apes 2! It's cool how there's both extremes to the matter; both sides have very valid points...

Indeed.

I'm learning a lot right now.

Aside from HAM radio and the internet, what else do you think will make a suitable transmission medium for the blockchain?

Summary so far:

•It would take a long time.
•Difficulty would take a long time to readjust.
•Old miners get reactivated.
•Impossible!
•It is possible.
•There are alternative transmission mediums.
•Planet of the apes.

Fixt. And dat triple post doe haha. You didn't summarize whether the value would increase/decrease

Pigeons.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers?


The bandwidth of this tech is getting quite amazing, if one unit moves 4 terabytes in an hour, it's approaching 10 Gigabits per second, does your internet match up?

Indeed. The potential problems are plenty and it's very difficult / impossible to predict the exact consequences.

This issue most definitely needs more attention. As of now there seem to be no continuity plans in place whatsoever.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

The fact that the miners are scattered all around is good in some sense and bad in others.

Should anything happen that would disrupt the power grids and/or transcontinental Internet connections, we would immediately have several separated "islands" of block chains that would start living life of their own. The common term for this scenario is "forking".

The problems arise from the fact that when the connections are restored, the chain with the most work put to it is going to win; i.e. the forks that have less work done would in effect become invalid, invalidating all work and all transactions that have happened in that fork after the forking.

If all mining would stop the moment a fork happens, it would be relatively easy to merge the chains later on. However, if we have several forks that all have work (hashing power) put to them, sorting the mess out later on would be very difficult if not impossible.

It baffles me why this issue has been so completely ignored. Many seem to believe nothing will ever happen that would break the international Internet connections in a way that would lead to problems described in this thread. However, both common sense and hard facts clearly show that such ultimate trust to the capability of Internet to persist are completely unfounded. All that is needed is one underwater volcanic eruption at the right spot, one big enough coronal mass ejection from the Sun, or one carefully targeted terrorist attack (false flag or real deal) and the block chains of all crypto currencies would be in chaos.

The fact that Bitcoin has many users does not make it one bit less vulnerable - in fact it's exactly the other way around, since big number of users would mean big amounts of transactions and mining taking place in each fork.

I've been putting significant amounts of time and energy into finding solutions that would minimize the risk of forking shoud, for example, Europe and Americas become disconnected from each other. As a systems architect with a background in security and disaster planning I see this not as a doomy & gloomy scenario but rather as a very interesting and inspiring challenge. There are ways to minimize the risk. I'll get back to those in a moment in another reply to this thread.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

This is a very interesting issue indeed to which I've given considerable amounts of brainpower lately. It happens to be a question I've worked with before when designing emergency communications systems and alike.

HAM would be great as a backup system in many ways, and very limited in others. First of all it's half duplex, i.e. data can move only one direction at a time. All coins in existence today use TCP as their transport layer, and TCP relies heavily in two-way connections. This combined with the fact that a typical speed for a HAM based data connection is anywhere between 300 - 2400 BAUD (anyone remember what BAUD is?;) means the transfers would be extremely slow. HAM can and most definitely should be part of the backup plan, but other options are needed as well.

Basically any system that allows transferring data (preferably in full duplex) would be usable as a backup. Solutions that would only be usable as long as at least part of the infrastructure work include mobile data, satellite phones, old school modems, or any Internet based service such as e-mail, irc or ssh. As long as the Net is even partially functional, Tor and I2P can help a lot since they can go around the routing limitations and breakages of the "normal" routing topology - at least up to certain extent.

Hack based systems that would only work over short distances could include ideas such as having two laptops with web cameras pointed at each other, and the data being transmitted by encoding it as a series of blinks displayed on the screen; i.e. white screen = 1, black screen = 0 etc. Doable, even easily, but only works over rather short distances.

The more exotic light based solutions include communications using laser bounce from Moon; i.e. the data would be encoded in laser light that would be pointed to the Moon, and the reflection being read by the receiving end. If both ends have all the gear then two-way connections would of course be possible. This, however, is rather sci-fi stuff - doable and it has been done already, but it requires very expensive gear and lots of expertise.

Since a complete catastrophe that would totally blow out the electricity and the Internet is less likely than something that would only cripple them, even the most simple solutions including Tor with perhaps some modem based backups could save a lot. All that is needed are few well networked "bridges" over the communications gaps.

Altcoin.Center's addnode seed network is one attempt to come up with a backup system that can cope with at least certain level of Internet breakdown. Our seed nodes are connected to each other using a handful of backup channels, although they are all depend on at least some level of Internet connectivity to remain. If something happens that brings down the whole net (or the very high quality server systems where our nodes are hosted) then the situation is probably so bad that block chains are the last thing to think about. However, in a scenario where problems would be in the scale of 90% traffic between US and Europe being lost, solutions such as our addnode seed network could save the day.

We're currently at a beta test phase, hosting a handful of chosen altcoins on our servers. More servers and more currencies will be added shortly, and the network will also be providing backup communications systems in the form of P2P backed up IRC network etc. If anyone is interested in participating by, for example, maintaining a seed node in his or her area, please PM me. We're not getting any money out of this and maintaining the servers do have costs so all kinds of support is warmly welcome.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

My guess would be short enough range that using a catapult to fire floppy disks at each other becomes more viable.

Sufficiently intense light such as a laser at each end could make it 2 miles LOS though. Buuuut, if your wifi card gets fried enough that you're not capable of a couple of miles LOS with wifi, I don't imagine the rest of your computer is in great shape either.

Stratum connections to mining pools are very low bandwidth, full nodes seem to nee about 400 bits per second per node connected, so 3.2 kilobits for 8 nodes. When a block is propogated though, you need to get 100KB downloaded in a reasonable timeframe...


However, it ain't your grandpa's RTTY speeds out there any more... (Unless you're determined to get the backside of the planet direct on shortwave)
http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/

It is possible, but not probable. It would take a very long time for the difficulty to adjust downwards however in this time additional miners would likely be added to the network - it really does not matter if the miners previously mined or if they are newly manufactured, however it is more likely they would be newly manufactured as newly manufactured miners can take advantage of the newest technology and will be the most efficient - but mining will be more profitable because the EV of mining will be increased due to the increased TX fees that can be included in each block.

The way that newly found blocks are transmitted does not matter. It is not the miners that are transmitting the newly found blocks, it is the nodes, however any event that causes miners to go offline would likely cause many nodes to go offline as well. Transmitting found blocks via ham radio or some other way would not affect the PoW process.

lol

Who cares about you and those scientists?
If it blows out lights out on 1 continent, that won't have a significant impact on the network, since it is just 1 continent. A ton of people would instantly support the network from other parts of the world.
Also keep note that such a 'light out' would cause chaos. Chaos in which dollars, euro, bitcoin won't matter at all.
Stop trying to spread FUD.

Can your power grid handle a Solar flare of X-Class higher than 40? Do you know, that it will happen one day, and will be aimed directly at us? Do you also know it has happened in the late 19th century, but thankfully back then we were not as advanced as we are now.

Probably yes, with the difference being that catapulting floppies would require quite intensive and continuous manual intervention. =D

These examples I gave are or course quite far fetched stuff. However, when looking for new solutions it's best not to limit one's thinking too much to begin with.


Yes, although it's all guesswork. Some parts may be better saved than others depending on their structure and how they've been protected.

We're talking about a number of different possibilities at the same time. EMP's are not uniform but can come in many different shapes. Sharp and powerful ones (such as those created by nuclear or EMP bombs) have the capability to fry pretty much everything, while those more "lazy" ones caused by CMEs or geomagnetic disturbances would not typically effect individual computers in any way, but the would kill electric delivery systems. If the grid goes down then eventually the communication networks go down as well. If the communication networks go down but individual computers and their parts are still ok, then the situation would quite well be such that being able to use the kinds of hacks I've been mentioning could have a huge significance.


Yeah, the demands are not very intensive. Problems with the HAM solution have more to do with the half vs. full duplex issue, plus the fact that you have to have the gear, the skills to operate it - and someone to communicate with.


When I was referring to the "grandpa RTTY speeds" I was specifically talking about HAM, implying "backside of the planet direct on shortwave".

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

Exactly. All that is needed to prevent hte potentially catastrophic forking scenario is that many enough nodes can connect with each other over the gaps created by the loss of the usual communications means.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

Generally speaking, those who understand the issue at hand and it's potential consequences do care about it.

Those who don't care or do not want to care are free to do so.


"Just" one continent? Are you serious?


Very limited thinking. If we're talking about the CME scenario then the effects would most probably be world-wide - not limited to "just" any single continent.

Also, if the communications lines are down, there's no way to rush in to support the network.

The most probable outcome would be that the network would be split in many parts - i.e. forked.


As I mentioned several times in my posts, there are different possible scenarios. Not all of them would lead to full chaos. I also specifically mentioned that should the worst case scenarios play out, "the situation is probably so bad that block chains are the last thing to think about". Did you miss that or do you just like to attack people?


Stop trolling and learn how to respect other people - also those who do not share your opinions.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

Agreed.

Finland is the only country in the world whose grid is protected against CME induced EMPs.

The delivery networks can not be protected by Faraday cages; specially designed transformers are needed to lead the induction currents out of the grid without harming the transformers and other parts of the system.

Having protected server rooms doesn't help much if there's no way for the servers to connect with the outside world. Or, if they don't have electricity. From the standpoint of an individual user, the most likely problems would have to do with the lack of both electricity and [global] communications channels the wallets need to function - i.e. the Internet.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

listen to only wan satoshi he knows the true powers of the fork and the dark coin

For one it would take about x20 longer for transactions to confirm until the next difficulty adjustment.

=D

Yes, indeed.

Depending on the details of the scenario, things could get really complicated.

A total "everything down on one blow" would in a way be very simple.

I'd say a much more probable situation is such that the connectivity and/or electricity would come and go while the affected systems would try to manage with the situation. Parts of the electric grid would probably come back online for a while, then crash again under the intensive load. Communications systems would most probably act similarly; when the operators would get parts of the systems back online, the amount of traffic (and overhead caused by routing errors etc.) would soon clog the networks.

This would mean the block chain would be under constant changes as well, nodes and miners appearing and disappearing depending on which parts of the electricity and communications networks would work at any given time. Network hash rate and difficulty would be going haywire. Forking would be virtually unavoidable.

While all this may sound like catastrophe loving fear mongering, to me it shows just as a normal situation given the parameters that affect it. We know how electric grids act when induction currents affect them, and we know what kind of chain reactions overload can cause in them as well. Same goes for communications systems. The only thing we can't be 100% certain of (yet) is how Bitcoin and other crypto currencies would react to the situation - simply because, unlike with electric grid and communication networks, there has not yet been s big scale scenario from which we would have data. A lot can be guesstimated though, since the working logic of block chain based currencies is after all rather simple.

A lab simulation would be an interesting thing to do. It could also be done as a virtual simulation. If anyone has the time and curiosity to take on such project, I'll be happy to participate in the planning and can provide server and network capasity to do it.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

Yah they've got HF, VHF and UHF bands to play with though, potential data rate is better on those, but don't generally reach intercontinental unless the amateur satellites are still running. Though there's moon bounce, meteor bounce modes etc.

It would not be that long. As it is now blocks, on average, are much less then the 1 MB size limit, and pools will often broadcast blocks that are well under this limit to avoid risking their block getting orphaned. However this risk would be decreased with the new, temporarily longer block time plus the additional TX fees included in many transactions would result in the blocks generally being much closer to 1 MB, if they are not all filled to 1 MB exactly.

It would shatter lives, If the governments are not going to reimburse the damages.

1. Nobody would be able to trade Bitcoin because lack of miners
2. All of that money in their accounts would be lost
3. They would still have to pay taxes for nonexistent money.

Anything catastrophic enough to shut down Bitcoin would disrupt global civilization. Martial law would dictate most of your daily activities. Depending on how long it takes to restore the internet, you might want to consider bargaining for protection under a well armed warlord.

Dystopian currency could be 9x19 parabellum rounds  :D

"They" in fact include me, although I haven't had the time to finish my official examination yet.

The bands you mentioned do indeed have some differences regarding how fast packet radio connections can be built on top of them, and very different in how long distance connections they can be used for.

High frequency bands can carry more data, but for much shorter distances.

Typical speeds for packet radio when working on intercontinental connections top around 56 kbit/s, and that's already a very good achievement.

I'm not quite sure what you refer to with "amateur satellites". HAM amateurs do not use any satellites for either continental nor intercontinental connections; it's all ground station to ground station.

Moon bounce is a challenging thing and very rarely used, although the HAM Radio Coin team is going to attempt it in the near future.

"Meteor bounce" is again something I have never heard of until now. I really wonder how I've managed to miss that one. ;)

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

That's how the West was one.

Things are not quite that black and white.

Bitcoin would be disrupted easily. For example, if intercontinental Internet connections were lost for just few hours (actually minutes would probably do the trick), we would have a huge forking issue which would be well enough to bring Bitcoin usage to a halt.
 
Hardly a case that would cause martial law and full chaos.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

If is for children. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY-2einPmd4)

Well that sounds clever to me.

"Things are the way I believe they are and no surprises will ever happen", right?

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

That's a big if. Besides, all it would take is a few radio or satellite links to patch the blockchain when cables were cut. The blockchain and its watchdogs would still recognize the work.

Only it will take to much time and some1 here mentioned it that some old rigs will be activated.

Crazy. But funny.

Nice list you have here. Last one is good BTW.
Interesting some thing may occur even sooner.

This is one of the many reasons why I am so against ASICs. You have a smaller distribution, creating farms, while also creating critcal point of failures in the network during an occurrence. This aside from the fact that you hit a silicone ceiling with Moors law.

Well it is pointless to discuss in such a thread. Its purpose is to spread fear among the people who use Bitcoin. Some don't even understand what such a Solar flare would do. Some even made threads before asking what would happen to Bitcoin in such a scenario.  ::)

Interesting thing: it's very rare to see an older member (those who are here since the beginning)  make such a thread (I myself haven't seen one).

By the way, big mines are moving close to cheap power sources. Ergo, not so many miles of transmission line between them and power, ergo, could be first facilities to be back up after large scale grid disruption.

Pretty sure the bitcoin price would crash badly, the 5% of the miners now owns 20x more bitcoin, they would most likely sell immediately.

This could result in a larger percentage of orphaned blocks as there tends to be more latency when dealing with satellites then fiber optic transmission lines. This however would not affect the network hashrate (some miners may decide to stop mining because of the lower EV of the result of the higher percentage of orphaned blocks, but not enough to make a major difference)

bitcoin verification will take eternity. come to think of it, do the miners get abducted?

You have a very positive idea about how the Internet and the companies operating it work.

I'm not quite sure you understand the amounts of traffic that would needed to be diverted over satellite links - we're talking huge fiber connections. It's also not just a simple matter of few key presses; the underlying infrastructure is complex and there are many companies and other entities operating it. It's not like in the movies where good willing tech agents get things going in a blink of an eye.

Also, satellites are the first thing to go if a big CME hits.

You're free to keep your views - I'm not trying to change that. What I am saying though is that those views are not facts and as far as I can tell they are not based on facts either.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

Yes. If (hehe;) there would be such backup links available at all (i.e. satellites would be working), if the traffic could be rerouted over those satellite links (despite the limitations in the bandwidth satellites can provide), and so forth.

The block chain system itself is rather tolerant and adaptive, but only as long as the underlying network has at least decent amount of functionality. Should something as disruptive as a massive CME or, say, an underwater volcanic eruption happen that would disconnect whole continents from each other for prolonged periods of time, then it's virtually unavoidable that forking would occur.

There certainly are lots of ifs in this game. However, ignoring them and assuming things will just stroll along nicely is not what would be considered "wise" by anyone who has any understanding of risk assessment. It's a known fact (not a possibility) that scenarios like Carrington's event will play out eventually. What we do not yet know is how the modern infrastructure will be able to cope with that. Informed individuals and specialists have a clear consensus that it is most likely that there will be big disruptions in both delivery of electricity and functionality of the communications networks. Satellites are particularly vulnerable to anything that creates chaos such as high ionization in the atmosphere.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

Well thinking about it a little bit, I would say that the undersea internet cables would probably go down well after satellites go down. Sure there could be some kind of underwater volcanic activity however this would probably not knock out all of the underwater communications lines, it would probably make the remaining internet infrastructure more strained and potentially increase latency. They are however, to my understanding build to withstand a lot

Yah, I think undersea cables would be least of worries for sunspot zap. Firstly the large majority are fibreoptic now, and secondly even a few feet of water is a fairly effective screen, so even copper would be protected from picking up stray RF.

It's probably pretty much the above surface infrastructure that would take the damage. However, fibre is the go to for that nowadays, and if all the ends are in EMP resistant well shielded data centers, it's only really the local "last mile" bits that are on copper, and could pick up RF.... and of that.. any that are cable TV coax are probably more resistant than UTP, BUT, more UTP is underground than coax so might be a bit of a wash.

Plus the water is able to effectively block solar waves. If you get deep enough in the ocean, it will be pitch black (assuming no light sources with you).

I don't think many of the undersea internet cables are made of copper anymore, they are most likely mostly made of fiber-optics.

It would suddenly (and briefly) become extremely profitable to mine and every person with any mining ability (from videocard to asic) would mine.

The system would adapt and within days if not hours it would be back to previous hashrate.

I would start mining with everything I have. (after the difficulty correction)

Price will go up i suppose but i dont know now we sell all those coin. EMP would blast not just miners also servers for exchanges.

Nice you will mine.


My tough the same price in this scenario will be who hows how much.

1. maybe
2. maybe not
3. true if someone saved them or kept them in museum
4. --
5.--
6. very possible
7. nope but something similar

This would be good news for miners who still on as the reward will go to them.

The remaining 5% of the miners will still continue to mine in order to sustain the network. Transaction confirmation will be slow but that doesn't mean a complete meltdown of the bitcoin network. With that said, block reward is now shared among less people so it's a bigger share of pie for everybody. This means the network will slowly grow again will those who initially dropped out has decided to start anew. And so it moves forward again until we see an equilibrium.

IMO, it boils down to this...

Bitcoin's chances of survival are about equal to the survival of technological "Western Civilisation" as a whole. Any event large and catastrophic enough to knock us back to the stone age, will shut down everything. At that point, you won't want bitcoin, you should be smart enough not to take scrip, gold and silver may eventually gain value as trading tokens AFTER an agrarian economy re-develops, but in the meantime you'll want canned and preserved food period, everything else will be worthless.


Bitcoin is however antifragile, and due to it's distributed and still decentralised enough nature, may actually stay "up" longer than conventional electronic financial systems, the ATM and payment networks. Which remember are also very proprietary and not amenable to being patched up and adapted by local techs to work with whatever connectivity is available. It could be the case that should North America get a medium power "zap" from the Sun, that it is bitcoin that comes to the fore and keeps the economy working. Sure it might be that sending money from California to New York goes all the way round the world to get there, because everything in the middle US is blown out, but "local" payment networks could never be wired up to do that, whereas bitcoin already is.

Bitcoin price would crash badly as it is easy for 51% attack.

Yes, I do it twice before breakfast every morning  ::)


Edit: Holy crap that's a senior member, how the hell are you around here this long and not even get a clue by osmosis.

Yes, different parts of the system are vulnerable to different issues.

The Net was designed to be "nuclear war proof" and many assume that would mean that if one connection breaks down, the traffic would be automatically rerouted elsewhere. However, that's not quite the truth. Some operators have their own backup channels, some operators may have mutual agreements regarding backup routing, but generally speaking much would depend on manual reconfiguration by the operators. That could be challenging should the situation be more or less chaotic.

But yes, underwater cables are less vulnerable to "stuff" coming from the Sun.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

EDIT: This map is quite informative: http://www.submarinecablemap.com/ (http://www.submarinecablemap.com/)

RF is not the biggest problem on surface of the Earth or at the bottom of the ocean.

It's the geomagnetic fluctuation caused by CME pushing the Earth's magnetic field over to a point where it "flips" back to it's original position. That's what creates the induction currents to any conductive material - in essence, it's nature's "EMP bomb". Water does not affect magnetic field in any way so underwater cables as well as the related infrastructure is vulnerable to these induction currents.


Again, RF is not the problem on surface level - it's the magnetic field and the induction currents.

Although this is just an estimate, I would say that it is much more likely that the problems arise from the fact that the electric grid would suffer significantly. It doesn't help much if the underwater cables are ok, if there's no electricity to drive the infrastructure that's needed to make them work. Some (perhaps even most) operators do have backup generators, but those too have limits to how long they can keep the system working. Delivery of oil/gas requires electricity, so when the initial reserves run out there has to be a way to refill - and people motivated to taking care of the refilling in midst of the possibly quite hectic period of global unrest.

Now these are of course just scenarios, and as I've stated many times I do not claim to know the exact scope of what would happen. However, what I do know is that assuming things would be "pretty much ok" in the case of something like direct hit from a Carrington's event simply does not match with what we know from prior experience.

The point is, since there are well grounded reasons to assume that something will at some point disrupt the international Internet connections up to a level that will cause significant problems in connectivity, it would be rather stupid not to at least consider the affects such situation would/will have on crypto currencies. It would be bad enough to cope with the situation of loss of electricity on a massive scale, and the global finances would be a complete mess anyways. If crypto is to replace fiat as the #1 choice of the mankind, then issues like these can not simply be ignored in good faith.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

I do agree up to certain extent. However, there is no knowing of the scope of the blowback that the scenarios discussed in this thread would cause. If "everything" would really be shut down, then crypto would not be at the top of the recovery priority list. Then again, the significance of commerce is easy to ignore particularly in situations that involve any kind of catastrophe. Currency is the means of exchange, and exchange is part of the most basic functions of the mankind. It would not loose it's meaning even in case of dystopic events - in fact it's quite possible that the opposite would happen.


Bitcoin is in some sense antifragile due to it's distributed nature, and then again it's that very nature that also makes it vulnerable to problems such as forking. That's the key argument of what I'm trying to say here: it is very important to make sure that Bitcoin and other crypto currencies will be able to maintain their distributed block chains synchronized even in something happens that prevents international Internet connections from working either partially or fully.

It's not too difficult or costly to come up with backup solutions and that's precisely what I'm working on and why Altcoin.Center's seed network was set up in the first place. It's still an alpha state project with very limited capability to remedy the potential problems. If it's for vain then it's for vain; I can live with that. What I could not live with is if something happened and I would not have even tried to do anything while being fully aware that I should have.

- Jyri
--
Altcoin.Center

I would think that there would be other "things" that might interfere with any "EMP" in the sometimes miles between the surface of the ocean and the bottom of the ocean where the cables lie. For example there is going to be a large number of species that lives in the ocean as well as underwater "plants" that likely have, overtime grown over many of the underwater cables. I would say that the effect of an EMP shockwave would be unknown to underwater cables and infrastructure as the vast majority of the ocean has not been explored in great detail and it is estimated that we don't even know about the vast majority of the underwater ecosystem.

In the price is so low, mining is a loss.

Well I would argue that the expected mining revenue would increase for the remaining 5% of the miners (because of the expected higher TX fees) - even before the difficulty were to adjust again. This would mean that miners who had previously been taken offline would be restarted again because of the higher potential revenue.

I think this would potentially cause huge swings in the difficulty level, first causing it to decrease substantially and then recover partially the next time the difficulty adjusts

It is actually true that one mining entity has over 45% mining power several times in history. If the community does not advocate the miners to leave that entity, it will be over 51%.

Price may fall or rise skyhigh.
Without any mining rigs or some cloud mining or something everything is out.

War will break. We all die. Kidding.

Dont wont this to happen

Who know what will happen.
None of scenarios here is not good but something similar is about to happen.

Why most countries spend more cash on military arsenal, so we can expect another WW maybe.

I am in the "price will go up camp".  Right now there are a ton of miners mining.  They need to sell their coins to pay for electricity.  They are constantly dumping so that makes the price so low.  If many miners went off line, the left over pools would be getting a lot more coins for the same amount of electricity.  They wouldn't need to sell so many.  They could hold and watch the price shoot up.  After it was high, they could then sell a few and have lots of money for electricity. 

The value of Bitcoin would explode for sure.

or will go dark.

But more likely will worth over 1 million $ if this to happen off course.

Or both.

wait. what?

I don't think that the miners are making up that much of a percentage of the total supply of bitcoin that is for sale. I think that some miners are mining to buy bitcoin at a discount and do not wish to sell immediately

I think it really depends on the miner. Maybe they can afford to pay electricity without selling coins. Maybe some also sell the coins to pay for electricity. Either way, they can only profit if the electricity price is low. There is no point in mining if you can't profit. Unless of course if you only mine to learn how stuff works.