So if everyone stops right now and the hash power of the network is equal to one guy mining with a CPU, it won't adjust after some time? I wasn't aware of this.
It makes sense if the difficulty only changes after X blocks mined (and with a single CPU, it will take a looong time for that to happen). I was thinking this was more time based rather than block based, but thinking now, that makes more sense.
Yeah, it doesn't adjust over time, it adjusts every 2016 blocks.
So, if this doomsday scenario where not all miners, let's just say 90% of them quit the difficulty will now adjust in the standard 14 days but in 140 days with a block every 100 minutes.
A lot of shitcoins have been attacked like that in the early days, with GPU frames switching to mine them, raising the difficulty 10 times and when that adjusted leaving them to die with no blocks being mined. That's when Kimoto Gravity Well, Digishield appeared.
Will the protocol survive? Yeah! Will the confidence and trust behind the coin....I have doubts, depending on the scale.
Fortunately, the scenario is close to impossible right now, and it's because of the good old $.
Not only is there still a financial incentive to mine, but also if some farms try to drop out of the business there is a lot of formerly inefficient gear that was retired (millions of s9) that will come back online since it is again profitable for them to mine.
As many already mentioned, if miners stop bitcoin will survive.
It is not that easy to kill bitcoin. It will survive
Actually it will be not dead and also not alive, more like a virus.
If all miners quit there will be no more blocks, no more confirmed transactions, so no activity on the chain but at the same time, even if 100 years pass and suddenly a single miner decides to mine it will come back..
alive.