If the internet were to go down worldwide for a day, how would Bitcoin avoid a collapse of the internet crisis?

Article by: Liam ‘Akiba’ Wright

Translated by: Chopper, Foresight News

Imagine the global internet backbone collapsing overnight.

Whether due to human error, catastrophic software vulnerabilities, malicious computer viruses, or direct military conflict — if the physical internet exchange hubs connecting the world suddenly go dark, what would be the fate of Bitcoin?

If Frankfurt, London, Virginia, Singapore, and Marseille go offline simultaneously, the Bitcoin network would split into three independent partitions.

Communication across the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and major trans-Pacific routes would grind to a halt. The Americas, Euro-Africa, Middle East, and Asia-Pacific regions would each develop their own transaction histories until network connectivity is restored.

Within each partition, miners would continue producing blocks based on the remaining hash power.

Targeting a 10-minute block time, regions with 45% hash rate would produce approximately 2.7 blocks per hour, those with 35% about 2.1, and regions with 20% roughly 1.2. Since nodes cannot exchange block headers or transaction data across partitions, each region would independently extend a valid blockchain without awareness of others.

Over time, as hash power distribution shifts, the natural length of chain splits would grow.

This partitioning rhythm makes chain splits inevitable. We simulate based on approximate hash rate shares: 45% in the Americas, 35% in Asia-Pacific, and 20% in Euro-Africa.

The American partition would add about 6 blocks every two hours, Asia-Pacific about 4-5, and Euro-Africa about 2-3.

After a full day, the number of split chains would exceed a hundred, surpassing typical reorganization depths, forcing services to treat regional confirmations as provisional.

The potential for reorganization in failed partitions increases linearly with the duration of isolation.

Local mempools would split immediately. Transactions broadcast in New York would not reach Singapore, so the sender’s partitioned node would see no evidence of the transaction until network recovery.

Transaction fee markets within each partition would become localized. Users competing for limited block space with their local hash rate share would see fees rise fastest in regions with high demand but low hash rate.

When transaction finality becomes uncertain globally, exchanges, payment processors, and custodial wallets typically pause withdrawals and on-chain settlements; Lightning Network counterparts face uncertainty — transactions confirmed in minority partitions may become invalid.

Network recovery triggers automatic coordination:

When connectivity resumes, nodes compare different chains and reorganize to the chain with the greatest accumulated work.

The main costs involve:

• Reorganizations invalidating blocks in minority partitions, with depth depending on how long the split lasted.
• Re-broadcasting and prioritizing transactions confirmed only on the failed chain.
• Exchanges and custodians performing additional operational checks before resuming full services.

During a 24-hour split, dozens to hundreds of minority chain blocks may become orphaned. Services need hours to rebuild mempools, recalculate balances, and restore withdrawal capabilities.

Because fiat channels, compliance checks, and channel management require manual review, full economic normalization often lags behind protocol-level recovery.

Modeling the isolation state based on “reachable hash rate share” rather than the number of hubs makes the dynamics clearer:

When 30% of hash rate is isolated, minority partitions produce about 1.8 blocks per hour. This means that standard 6-confirmation payments within that partition face a risk of invalidation after roughly 3 hours and 20 minutes — if the remaining 70% of the network builds a longer chain, those 6 blocks could be orphaned.

In a near 50/50 split, the cumulative work of two partitions is similar, so even brief splits can lead to competing “confirmed” transaction histories. The outcome upon reconnection is inherently random.

In an 80/20 split, the majority partition almost certainly prevails; the minority chain’s roughly 29 blocks produced in a day would be orphaned upon merging, causing many confirmed transactions in that region to be reversed.

Reorganization risk is proportional to “time” multiplied by “minority partition hash rate.” The most dangerous scenario is “long-term isolation + near-equal hash rate split.”

Existing resilience tools:

Various tools can mitigate the impact of disconnection, including satellite links, high-frequency radio relays, delay-tolerant networks, mesh networks, and Tor bridges, which can transmit block headers or streamlined transactions over damaged routes.

Though bandwidth is limited and latency high, intermittent cross-partition data transfer can help propagate some blocks and transactions, reducing fork depth.

Diversity in mining pool node interconnections and geographic distribution enhances the chance of side-channel propagation, limiting reorganization depth and duration when backbone networks recover.

Operational guidelines during network splits:

• Suspend cross-partition settlements, treat all transaction confirmations as provisional, and optimize fee estimation mechanisms amid fee surges.
• Exchanges can switch to reserve proof modes, extend confirmation thresholds to mitigate minority partition risks, and publish policies — e.g., setting confirmation counts based on duration of isolation.
• Wallets should clearly inform users of regional finality risks, disable automatic channel rebalancing, and queue time-sensitive transactions for rebroadcast after recovery.
• Miners should maintain diverse upstream connections and avoid manual modifications to the “longest chain” rule during coordination.

From a protocol design perspective, the network can recover automatically: nodes will converge to the chain with the greatest accumulated work once reconnected.

However, user experience during splits will suffer significantly because economic finality depends on the consistent propagation of global data.

In the worst-case scenario of multi-hub disconnection lasting a day, the most likely outcomes are:

• Temporary collapse of cross-border usability
• Sharp, uneven fee increases
• Deep reorganizations causing regional confirmation failures

When the network recovers, the ledger will be deterministically repaired, and services will resume full operation after operational checks.

The final step involves re-enabling withdrawals and Lightning channels once the chain’s state is consistent.

If the split can never be repaired:

What happens if those backbone hubs remain permanently disconnected? In this dystopian scenario, the Bitcoin we know would cease to exist.

Instead, there would be permanent geographic partitions, each acting as an independent Bitcoin network: sharing the same rules but unable to communicate.

Each partition would continue mining, adjusting difficulty at its own pace, and developing its own economy, order books, and fee markets. Without reconnection or artificial coordination to select a single chain, there would be no mechanism to reconcile transaction histories across partitions.

Consensus and difficulty adjustment:

Before each partition completes its next 2016-block difficulty adjustment, block times will be faster or slower depending on reachable hash rate. After adjustment, each partition stabilizes its block time around 10 minutes.

Based on initial hash rate shares, the estimated times for the first difficulty adjustment are:

• Approximately 31 days in one region
• 40 days in another
• 70 days in the third

Because halving heights are reached at different rates before the first adjustment, halving dates will gradually diverge over time.

Supply and “Bitcoin’s Definition”: Fees, Mempools, and Payments:

Within each partition, the 21 million supply cap per chain remains valid. But globally, the total Bitcoin across all partitions would exceed 21 million — since each chain issues its own block rewards.

Economically, this results in three incompatible BTC assets: they share addresses and private keys but have different UTXO sets.

Private keys can control tokens across all partitions: if a user spends the same UTXO in two regions, both transactions are valid locally, creating “split tokens” with identical pre-split history but divergent post-split histories.

Mempools become permanently localized; cross-partition payments cannot propagate. Any attempt to pay users in another partition will fail to reach the recipient.

Fee markets will become localized: in the long run, partitions with smaller hash rate shares will face tighter capacity before difficulty adjustments, normalizing afterward.

Lightning Network channels cannot route across partitions: HTLCs will timeout, counterparties will publish commitment transactions, and closing channels will only be valid within the local partition. Cross-partition liquidity will stagnate.

Security, Markets, and Infrastructure:

Each partition’s security budget equals its local hash rate plus fee revenue. Hash rate in the isolated 20% region will be far less costly to attack than the original global network.

Long-term, miners may migrate to partitions with “higher token prices and lower energy costs,” shifting security dynamics.

Because block headers cannot be transmitted across partitions, an attacker in one partition cannot tamper with another’s transaction history; attacks are confined regionally.

Exchanges will become regionalized, with trading pairs diverging — e.g., BTC-A (Americas), BTC-E (Europe-Africa), BTC-X (Asia-Pacific) — each with different prices, even though all are called BTC.

Fiat on/off ramps, custodial services, derivatives markets, and settlement networks will focus on specific regional chains. Index providers and data services will need to choose a single chain per platform or publish composite data across multiple regional chains.

Cross-chain assets and oracles relying on global data sources will either fail or split into regional versions.

Protocol rules will remain consistent within each partition unless coordinated changes occur internally. However, upgrades in one partition won’t automatically apply to others, leading to divergence over time.

Mining pools, block explorers, and wallets will need to set up independent infrastructure for each partition. Without manual cross-chain coordination, multi-host services cannot synchronize balances across chains.

Can partitions reorganize without hubs?

If communication pathways are permanently severed, protocol-level convergence becomes impossible.

The only way to return to a single ledger is through social and operational means: e.g., coordinating parties to select one partition’s chain as the canonical chain and abandon or replay other partitions’ transactions.

After weeks of deep divergence, automatic reorganization back to a single chain becomes unfeasible.

Operational Recommendations:

We must treat permanent splits as “hard forks sharing pre-split history”:

• Manage private keys carefully to securely spend tokens post-split.
• Use only transaction outputs unique to each region to avoid accidental replay.
• Establish independent accounting, pricing, and risk management systems for each partition.

Miners, exchanges, and custodians should designate a main partition, publish chain identifiers, and set policies for deposits and withdrawals per chain.

In summary, if backbone hubs can never be restored and no alternative paths bridge the communication gap, Bitcoin will not disappear; instead, it will evolve into multiple independent Bitcoin networks that can never be merged again.