How is 51% attack working and the chance of reversible transactions

[o_e_l_e_o]

I don't know all the factors that will affect the difficulty, but when there's a rise in price, I know at least one. Hence, it's more expected to have a rise in difficulty than a fall.

In the 336 times the difficulty has been adjusted, 273 of those have been an increase, and only 63 have been a decrease. It's always more likely for the difficulty to rise, regardless of what the price is doing.

That's only in extreme cases though like when a country like China cracks down on its miners otherwise we have a wide range of miners around the world that are mining with different costs (ranging from $0.002 KWH to $0.20+ KWH) and same mindset (who may not even see the drop as a profit loss but an opportunity).

Which, again, lends credence to my point that price and hashrate are not directly correlated.

If the two things were directly correlated, then when the price falls by 50%, the hashrate would also fall by a similar amount as mining become unprofitable for a large number of miners. Instead, the price falls by 50% and the hashrate continues to increase. The price of bitcoin is obviously high enough that even if it falls by 50% then miners are still turning enough profit not only to not turn off their machines, but to continue adding more hash power. Maybe the two were directly correlated in the past, but for quite some time miners have obviously been earning more than enough that the price can make huge swings and not impact significantly on their operations.

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[BlackHatCoiner]

In the 336 times the difficulty has been adjusted, 273 of those have been an increase, and only 63 have been a decrease. It's always more likely for the difficulty to rise, regardless of what the price is doing.

What if 273 out of the 336 times, the price had also increased too, between the retarget periods? Would this make my statement seem more correct? What is the common assumption one can make if every other factor remained the same and only price was variable?

[o_e_l_e_o]

What if 273 out of the 336 times, the price had also increased too, between the retarget periods?

If every time the price went up the difficulty followed, then yes, that would be correct. But that's simply not what happens. Sometimes the price goes down and difficulty goes up. Sometimes the price goes up and the difficulty goes down.

What is the common assumption one can make if every other factor remained the same and only price was variable?

That's the whole point - there are too many other variables to say that price accurately determines hashrate. The availability of electricity, the price of that electricity, local disasters/storms/floods/blackouts/etc., the availability/production/cost of new ASICs, the availability of new locations to host mining hardware, the profitability of mining other coins, local laws/regulations/taxes, the list is enormous. The interplay between all these things is far too complex to be able to say "x goes up, so therefore y goes up".

As I said above, if the price fell to $10, then that would be a big enough change to overcome all these things and the hashrate would tank. And if the price rocketed to $1,000,000, then again, that would be a big enough change to overcome all these things except the availability of new ASICs. But at current prices, the price does not exert enough of an influence to cause significant changes in the hashrate, as we have just seen by the price falling by 50% but the hashrate increasing by 33%.