Suppose hypothetically that tomorrow the price of Bitcoin became $0 due to some blockchain hack or economic event or that for some reason the difficulty went to infinity and you couldn't make a penny mining.
I keep reading many many threads here and I am starting to realise that Bitcoin is becoming much more then a hobby for some. There are people who constantly keep buying new equipment at retail when they pay alot for electricity and still have old unpaid hardware. And yet they still keep buying hardware
I keep seeing people who constantly keep buying more and more Bitcoin on margin or who empty out their 401K and reinvest it into Bitcoin. I see many individuals who max out their credit cards and trying to buy Bitcoin either thru Paypal or some merchants.
For myself. If bitcoin went to $0, I probably would be very sad and a little pissed off. Economically I would be hurt slightly but nothing that would make me suicidal.
How would it work out for you?
Your scenarios are impossible. Bitcoin difficulty cannot go to infinity, and the blockchain cannot be "hacked".
It is possible that some flaw is found in the protocol that cannot be easily fixed via a hard fork (and this flaw is exploited). IMO this scenario is unlikely but still plausible.
Also I've been on these forums for ~3 years now and I've literally never heard of someone maxing out their credit cards to buy btc.
I am sure that people have done this, they probably haven't had to admit it though as for most of Bitcoin's history, this kind of bet would have paid out handsomely given enough time, and people would just claim that they purchased it and left out the fact that they borrowed money to do so
I have recently sold the only miners that I have ever owned, so I wouldn't have any immediate need for money to pay for current expenses (electricity) related to anything bitcoin related. Although it would certainly hurt morale as it would have essentially made my recent project more or less a waste of time.
It would likely cause the majority of the corporate miners to take their miners offline which would both cause a huge drop in the network difficulty, and one likely large enough to cause the need for a hard fork to change the difficulty ahead of schedule.