What will happen to the Bitcoin network if Russia blocks access to the internet?

[franky1]

If Russian miners can not see blocks coming from the rest of the world and the world does not see Russia's, then does it not lead to forking?

if the russians have no internet they would both not see any blocks because they have no internet. AND they wont be producing any blocks because.. yep THEY HAVE NO INTERNET

having no internet means no fork, no different chain. it just means no competition from russia. they are just dead/stalled. not part of the network or any network
basically not receiving. not broadcasting anything.

EG
there was no chain split when kazahkstan went dark last year. because no internet means NO INTERNET

[BlackHatCoiner]

having no internet means no fork, no different chain. it just means no competition from russia.

Cutting the internet connection doesn't take their computational resources. They can still use them to mine blocks, even if they had been using them to provide shares in a pool outside Russia.

there was no chain split when kazahkstan went dark last year. because no internet means NO INTERNET

I can think of many other reasons why they didn't split Bitcoin. One's that it makes consensus harder to be achieved. Another is that there wasn't enough demand for a fork to occur.

[franky1]

having no internet means no fork, no different chain. it just means no competition from russia.

Cutting the internet connection doesn't take their computational resources. They can still use them to mine blocks, even if they had been using them to provide shares in a pool outside Russia.

there was no chain split when kazahkstan went dark last year. because no internet means NO INTERNET

I can think of many other reasons why they didn't split Bitcoin. One's that it makes consensus harder to be achieved. Another is that there wasn't enough demand for a fork to occur.

THERE WAS NO INTERNET in kazahkstan
it wasnt a choice to not fork. it was NO CHOICE.

ill word it another way.
if a government turns off your electric. you have no electric.. its not a choice that you decide not to have your lights on.. you simply HAVE NO LIGHTS.

no internet means NO communication between nodes. meaning no fork
its a simple piece of common sense logic..
if you have no internet then your miners are doing nothing but burning electric for no reason
as there is no broadcasting
you are not broadcasting anything to anyone because your data is not leaving YOUR BUILDING

why would anyone continue mining if the only place their data goes is in their internal building LAN..

no WAN = no fork.
no one would be mining their own chain that is only seen on the computers in the same office as the miner. because that is just an expensive future orphan when the internet gets turned on again.

i know you might be thinking that russia will magically send smoke signals across many different asic farms across russia so that they combine their own separate chain within russia. but that is not the case.
imagine russia having say 20 asic farms of 200petahash..
its not a case of russia having a sub-net/fork of 4exahash.. instead if they are stupid enough to waste electric. they would have 20 chains of 0.2exa. meaning 1000x behind the mainnet
so instantly rejected

understand what no internet means. it means no broadcasting.
and knowing they cant broadcast, they are just waiting electric knowing that their many different chains at very very low hashrate will get rejected when the internet comes back.

ther would be no way to spend coins with merchants or exchanges while there is no internet. so no way to cash out any rewards. because no one outside of the warehouse of their asics will see those blocks

[BlackHatCoiner]

Ooh. No internet. Got it now... Excuse me, I thought we're talking about a scenario where the country is simply incapable of connecting outside. It's hard to imagine a world without internet. 

[franky1]

Ooh. No internet. Got it now... Excuse me, I thought we're talking about a scenario where the country is simply incapable of connecting outside. It's hard to imagine a world without internet.  

the title.. What will happen to the Bitcoin network if Russia blocks access to the internet? kinda gives away the scenario

there was no chainsplit when kazahkstan blocked access to the internet on riot week.

because no internet means no ability to broadcast beyond the walls of the building you create data in

[stompix]

imagine it this way
if there are 10 olympic runners each averaging a time of 9.5-10.5 seconds in a 100metre run.. only 1 can win
take one person off the track does not make the other runners run slower. it just means the chances of the 9 remaining runners winning increases. the average win is still the same average. but now 9 people get more wins when they run regularly
~
taking one competitor out of the race does not impact the speed of the other runners.
if one runner doesnt turn up. the other runners dont suddenly walk the 100m out of compassion for a lost competitor. the other runners still run at their same average speed. and now get a higher chance of winning per race

No franky1, it doesn't work like that.

Each of those miners wins when they got the best time, but when the Russian athlete is disqualified the winning time will be the second-fastest, driving the average down. If it were like you imagine you could drive out 9 of that athletes and you will still get the same time, and then you could chop his legs and the and you will still get the same time.
Also, the model is completely stupid, since you have 9 people averaging each 9.5-10.5 the winning time deciding the average won't be 10 it will be closer to 9.5 as each athlete will at least once hit 9.5 with a 1/10 chance of course the chances for all of them to hit 10.5 to compensate are not the same but one order of magnitude higher.
 

[maria1110]

If Russia blocks access to the internet, mining difficulty might drop and it would become easier to mine Bitcoin. But price would affect demand as well, so there will be new balance. Things always have a way of working out. So don't worry.

[davis196]

If anything bad happens in Russia for Bitcoin network, effect would be smaller than what happened with China mining crackdown months ago. Because the hashrate from Russia is smaller than from China.

Think different like this. If the Western world do more serious sanctions on Russia, do you think their government will ignore Bitcoin mining for their benefit? They have huge land to set up mining farms, huge power supply from oil and more. They won't easily to kill themselves by saying no to Bitcoin. We can not identify what actually happen in Russia just like in China and reported hashrate can not tell us exact geographical locations of hashrate origins.

I really think that the Russian government doesn't care about Bitcoin and it would ignore Bitcoin for sure.
The idea of forking Bitcoin,due to Russia cutting it's internet from the rest of the world is quite interesting.
I think that the "Russian Bitcoin" would be pretty much worthless,because it would be disconnected from the rest of the world and having little to no demand inside Russia.Being a truly global currency is one of the factors,which gives value to Bitcoin.Having a bunch of local forked Bitcoins would mean way less trading volume,hashrate power,market price and market cap(not that the market capitalization matters anyway).

[cryptoaddictchie]

Russia is considering shutting down the internet connection to the rest of the globe. What will occur? Is the hash rate decreasing? What will happen if the connection is re-established in a few years?

Tricky question but mostly response would probably will not affect. Their hash rate isnt high compared to others and that fraction wouldnt badge bitcoin market or community. Russia is going a tough times right now, but Im sure their idea will jot pursue as people would probably condemned their President if ever Putin decided to do this.

[romero121]

About a month back, it was Kazakhstan placed on the second position among the bitcoin mining hotspots. Based on electricity consumption index data for March it is said that Kazakhstan will loss its second position and the void gets filled by Russia. We don't know the reality, however at this moment Russia seems to encourage mining than making a ban.

After USA it is Russia to contribute much to crypto mining. There is very minimal chance Russia block access to the internet. If such scenario happens, a void gets created and the same gets fulfilled by other countries. So, this doesn't look like a disturbance to the cryptocurrency network.

[Ararbermas]

If Russia ban the internet on their country probably it would be their problem only, i mean no other country included if that happens.
And i don't believe it can affect the crypto market since they only have their own digital currency not bitcoin and etc wherein it so called ruble. So i think no need to worry about that.

[Ozero]

Russia is considering shutting down the internet connection to the rest of the globe. What will occur? Is the hash rate decreasing? What will happen if the connection is re-established in a few years?

Tricky question but mostly response would probably will not affect. Their hash rate isnt high compared to others and that fraction wouldnt badge bitcoin market or community. Russia is going a tough times right now, but Im sure their idea will jot pursue as people would probably condemned their President if ever Putin decided to do this.

For some reason, no one here is wondering why in Russia they decided to suddenly turn off the Internet. A few days ago, Facebook and Twitter were blocked there, and now they want to turn off the Internet altogether. The reason for this is simple: Putin does not want Russian citizens to know information about the real reasons for the invasion of Ukraine, the course of the war in Ukraine, heavy losses in manpower and equipment, rocket and bomb attacks on residential areas of cities, schools, hospitals and other similar objects, and therefore, so that riots against the bloody regime of Putin do not ripen among the people. Especially if citizens realize that their former life has deteriorated sharply precisely because of the attack on peaceful Ukraine.
At this forum, the Russians quite often approved of Putin's actions. I would like to know how they now relate to the fact that they are going to be cut off from the outside world?

[darewaller]

If Russian miners can not see blocks coming from the rest of the world and the world does not see Russia's, then does it not lead to forking?

I believe o_e_l_e_o meant something else.  If you have 75% of the hashrate and I have 25% and suddenly we lose connection, the blocks continue on my side as if you disconnected and on your side as if I did.  You still have a significantly higher hashrate than I do, which makes it easier to solve blocks for you than it is for me.  Since to me it is way more difficult to solve blocks, by the time difficulty changes you will have mined more blocks than I did.  The difficulty changes, so now your chain continues to be first although I do not see it yet.  Now the question remains, do we continue sideways until we connect and my progress vanishes in front of your chain or do we fork?  The safest and most logical way is the latter, unless the Russians want to play a Bitcoin Russian roulette.

It doesn't have multiple chains, it has one. Which means if there is a blockchain the whole world agrees to, and we all use it, then suddenly Russia goes out, just Russia goes out, the blockchain continues like nothing happened. If Russians are somehow trying to connect to it, they will fail, so they will have to create their own coin.

Consider it like BCH, bitcoin cash was created from Bitcoin blocks as well and became its own coin, Russians basically will have that. Bitcoin has only one, and it can't be separated like that. If you really want to find a better way, they could just use a VPN to access bitcoin even if the government blocks them.

[yazher]

Russia is considering shutting down the internet connection to the rest of the globe. What will occur? Is the hash rate decreasing? What will happen if the connection is re-established in a few years?

That would be total destruction to those who are the only means of living is earning from the internet and there are lots of people who are like that especially those online tutors and other activities that using the internet might not gonna work as well and they cannot make money from it. If they can do that easily, I'm pretty sure that it will take years to restore it back and it will be another addition to our so-called new normal. I don't like that idea because I've been living where the internet is crucial and essential.

[Ryker1]

Russia is considering shutting down the internet connection to the rest of the globe. What will occur? Is the hash rate decreasing? What will happen if the connection is re-established in a few years?

Well there could have an effect but not won't hurt the entire bitcoin, a small percentage will be noticeable and it is easy to recognize when miners will not continue to mine. But this seems very impossible to happen, stop bothering yourself about this because it will never happen that Russia will shutdown internet, most people need internet from work and to their family --it is like it belongs now to the most important necessity is the internet.
However, I have read the news before that even radio waves bitcoin can make transactions and I don't think everyone wants to explore it.

[BlackHatCoiner]

the title.. What will happen to the Bitcoin network if Russia blocks access to the internet? kinda gives away the scenario

No internet doesn't necessarily mean they'll restrict the internet usage. I understood that they would simply limit it to their country only.

I really think that the Russian government doesn't care about Bitcoin and it would ignore Bitcoin for sure.

That isn't true. The minister of finance is pushing forward the regulation of cryptocurrencies, in general. In fact, I think we're in a period when every government is going to introduce them in their economic mechanism sooner or later. EU has withdrawn every one of their bad intentions regarding PoW. Biden took a step towards on regulating cryptocurrencies recently.

[Erumo]

If Russia blocks the internet, Bitcoin, at first will suffer from a price drop, but with time it will recover. It always does. In general, Bitcoin network wont suffer a lot or we will see significant changes. Take a look on North Korea and their internet. It is limited, it is controlled (lol). Yet they somehow manage to be involved in cryptocurrency. I think Russia will get same experience.

[stompix]

For some reason, no one here is wondering why in Russia they decided to suddenly turn off the Internet. A few days ago, Facebook and Twitter were blocked there, and now they want to turn off the Internet altogether. The reason for this is simple: Putin does not want Russian citizens to know information about the real reasons for the invasion of Ukraine

No, it's not a sudden decision and an idea that just popped into their heads now
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/28/russia-great-firewall-sovereign-internet-bill-keeping-information-in-or-out

They've started with this somewhere during 2018, made testa DNA pass legislation in 2019 as they were preparing for a fall-out even without this war, despite all the control Putin had over the media and on the voting process poeple were starting to ask themselves questions and one of the basic ones was:
- If we're a world power, the biggest country in the world, biggest gas and oil reserve, proclaimed self-sufficient in everything, why are we poorer than Bulgarians?

It was long in the planning and it's something nobody should be amazed of when it happens because it definitely will, the guy is simply going mad.

It is limited, it is controlled (lol). Yet they somehow manage to be involved in cryptocurrency. I think Russia will get same experience.

How many North Koreans you have seen around this forum?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Take a look on North Korea and their internet. It is limited, it is controlled (lol).

Their internet is highly censored. The pages you can visit are limited, let alone the services that accept Bitcoin. There is no reason for a totalitarian government, of that level, to get involved; they already control everything.

Even if I had high chances of getting away with it, I wouldn't even try, because there's a small chance I won't have a head afterwards.

[o_e_l_e_o]

It doesn't have multiple chains, it has one. Which means if there is a blockchain the whole world agrees to, and we all use it, then suddenly Russia goes out, just Russia goes out, the blockchain continues like nothing happened. If Russians are somehow trying to connect to it, they will fail, so they will have to create their own coin.

Consider it like BCH, bitcoin cash was created from Bitcoin blocks as well and became its own coin, Russians basically will have that. Bitcoin has only one, and it can't be separated like that. If you really want to find a better way, they could just use a VPN to access bitcoin even if the government blocks them.

That's not how it works. If Russians run the exact same protocol as the rest of the world, then there is one coin with two competing chains. If the Russian nodes every see the other chain from the rest of the world (which will have more work), then they will abandon the Russian chain and swap over to the other chain.

It is not the same scenario as bcash, which was deliberately forked from the bitcoin protocol and therefore incompatible with bitcoin.

How many North Koreans you have seen around this forum?

If you were a North Korean who had gained access to the rest of the internet, the last thing you are going to do is advertise that fact and draw attention to yourself.