Topic: What will happen to the Bitcoin network if Russia blocks access to the internet? - page 4. (Read 864 times)

I also think that it wouldn't affect much this is almost same as China banning Bitcoin,
The price could decline but I believe that it would still stay strong and once they get back we could see the price go up again.

Russia will separate from the normal internet on March 11, 2022.  

Russian bitcoin wallets and Russian bitcoin miners will be disconnected from the bitcoin network and all altcoin networks also.
Meaning they will be unable to use their bitcoins, unless they can circumvent the ban by accessing the normal internet,
which would mean having a satellite internet linkup not affected by the disconnect.

What could happen is bitcoin miners in Russia could split off from the main bitcoin network and continue their chain in a Russia only version.

If the nets were ever connected , then the Russia chain would battle the normal internet chain for dominance wiping out the weaker chain transactions,
however odds are the group running the weaker chain at that time, would update their code with a program coded checkpoint to prevent their chain from being wiped out.
Many would think the Russia chain would be weaker, but if the other countries keep banning bitcoin mining and Russia supported it,
the Russian chain could potentially become the stronger chain in time.

The real issue , is it proves that bitcoin is not as resistant to government censorship as some in these forums believe,
as by having a mere ISP backbone supporter disconnect from a segment, disables an entire country access to bitcoin, wallet transactions and mining.
Outlaw internet satellite access and across border travel, and you would not be able to cash out a single satoshi of btc from your wallet.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/technology/russia-ukraine-internet-isolation.html

It gives an impact on the crypto transaction but not that much. I could assume that they will turn back open to the other countries once the conflict is over. But for now, as they are taking control of their internet. This obviously stops the people in Russia to trade, perhaps there is no such confirmation yet of not allowing them but as Putin said to block internet access, that really be possible. Maybe we can't just see it now but in the coming days, there we can see changes as we know that there are huge crypto users in Russia.

Just remember that even if China totally banned mining, which was known to be the home of large percentage of miners, still bitcoin survives. So in case ,Russia will cut-off its bitcoin miners from the rest of the world, they are just small percentage in the hashrate or can we say, they are not controlling the majority of hash rate. It may have an immediate impact but bitcoin will continue to move forward just like when bitcoin went down when China announced its banning policy. But in few days, it recovered. This is the good thing about bitcoin, no country can control its existence. If one door closes, there will be more windows that will open for bitcoin.

Every kind of network LAN or WAN to communicate internationally with other computers in different countries needs an ISP to achieve this goal. It is possible for Russia to create a network that can communicate with computers in Russia which nobody can penetrate depending on the model they implemented.

ADSL and fibre routers dont 'dial out' to a ISP telephone number, so its not like you can dial-up to a new ISP .. well unless you want to use old dial-up speeds with a 56k modem

they work by 'switches' which direct certain data along the cable going to certain places. when you sign up to an ISP, THEY switch the switches to the particular provider. its not something you can control at your wall socket end

yes you can use satalite tech. EG Elon musk has redirected his starlink to move on a path that allows ukraine to be inline, but then there is the issue of elon getting 'base station' dishes into ukraine for them to communicate with starlink. same would apply to russia. having the orbital satalites on a path and having the base station dishes to communicate with it.

as for radio waves.. well thats like dialup speed stuff.. ok for short messages like a sms or tweet. but not for live streaming or bitcoin mining/block downloading

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.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

Even if Putin blocked all ISPs in the country, there would still be other ways to communicate with the Internet, right? I mean, I don't know exactly how it works technically, but unless all the phone connections to the rest of the world are cut off, people could still use other ISPs from neighboring countries? And how about satellites, or other forms of radiowave communication?

Nothing serious would happening, except that Russia would be left in the dark. Yeah, I know that some people would be expecting Bitcoin and whatever they are thinking, but man, Bitcoin has survived so many tough times in the past, so what would make this one any different?

Yes, there are lots of miners there as of lately, that’s true, and we do know that it would affect the hashrate of course. But, these are not going to be some kind of permanent issue to the Bitcoin network. Within a short time things are still going to change, and even if the price should drop (which would be just a bit) because of that, it would still pick up quickly for sure.

not really the case, it just means any russians making blocks are not seen, meaning that other nations mining pools get to submit their block result, meaning more rewards for the other nations to share with one less competitor nation
(less people at the party = more slices to pizza to eat amongst the smaller group)

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

what does cause a speed up or slowdown. is if each of the runners are using more or less muscle(asics) then previous fortnight. meaning the average time over a fortnight has changed to be more or less then the needed average.

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

infact, with the remaining runners winning more often they can afford to build more muscle(asics) and run more faster. so the speed of solves can happen more faster.
OR they can enjoy their easier wins and tone down some muscle(asics) and run more casually. and decrease their speed

---

here is the thing.
if putin wanted to, he could stop the citizen serving ISP's, meaning even if you have a VPN its useless if your router cant even connect to your ISP
whilst still allowing a public sector ISP to service the inner government routers

its not about IP banning certain sites. its about turning off ISP's that citizens subscribe to and have a landline/cellular network connection to that can be switched off.

i doubt putin would stretch that far to P!55 off all his citizens, but then again other countries have(kazahkstan fuel riots). so i wouldnt put it past him

I've talked with a guy from Russia and he said more or less that an Internet ban if anything like that ever happens will not change much in Russia because the society can be divided in two groups:
people who never had a computer and don't care if it is there or not
people who are in the Internet for 8+ hours a day and these know how to use VPN and will still have access.

Russia will never go full retard to physically cut all the cables. The elites want to know what's going on but also want their subjects and servants to live in the dark ages. They will only restrict access and this won't stop people just like arresting TPB founders did not stop torrents.

The impact of a country's policy on the bitcoin is small in the long run. The short-term impact will gradually disappear, just like China's policy last year. Isn't it good now?

Not quite. The main chain for the rest of the world will still be bitcoin. Whether or not the Russian chain would also be bitcoin would depend on what they do.

If the Russians change nothing about their network and just continue to mine, they will fall well behind the rest of the network. As ETFbitcoin has pointed out, mining in Russia would initially be incredibly difficult and the block time would be huge since they would be mining at the same difficulty with a small proportion of the global hashrate. They can do this, though, and simply generate a chain which is both shorter and has far less proof of work. If they choose to do this, then if there is ever communication between the two sides again (before any major new developments in the global bitcoin network) then their chain would lose to the main chain and simply be abandoned by all their nodes.

The other option is that they deliberate make their chain incompatible with the main chain (such as by forking to a new difficulty algorithm) which means if there was every a communication between the two sides in the future, their bitcoin fork would continue to exist as a fork of bitcoin.

Bitcoin would not exist twice. Either they fork to a different network, or they mine a chain split with the risk of their entire history disappearing at any time.

Absolutely. It would be a big risk for anyone on the minority chain (Russia). If someone had access to both networks, they could spend the same coins on each network. When the two networks reconnect and the minority chain is abandoned, then any transactions made within the Russian chain would simply no longer exist.

The chains would hopefully be made incompatible so this couldn't happen but it likely wouldn't anyway (the Russian chain would remain quite a bit behind).

If the forms are left as compatible main et chains though, the Russian version would not exist once it gets reconnected with other nodes and all of their transactions would be removed from the chain (though there's a chance someone with an archive would be able to push them all into confirming on the main chain).

---

If Russia disconnects itself from the internet then I think they'll face a lot of negative consequences (not only with bitcoin but with engineering and other advancements too). If they leave even a tiny part of their Internet open and accessible though, it'll probably end up being used by a lot more and in a lot of ways Russia wouldn't be expecting (like how the great firewall of China doesn't really work that well).

Since there will be the main chain and a side chain, would it be possible for some evil people to double spend or try to manipulate because of the lack of communication between the two chains? Previously when china miners shutdown their system, there were no fork problems 

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.

What if Russia, like some of the rumors say, will disconnect from the global network and continue with a separate network of their own rather than just censoring and blocking our side of the Internet?

If theirs become a completely separate type of Internet, could that not mean Bitcoin will continue to exist but.. twice?  Like a clone of the real one but in Russia without the possibility of communication between the two?  As if once the separation begins, we lose the Russian hashrate and they lose the rest of the world's and continue to function under the name of 'Bitcoin' although separately.  Since our network is different from theirs, they can not 'see' our Bitcoin and we can not 'see' theirs.  Pretty much like we would simulate the recreation of Bitcoin on a local network.  Is this possible, or is it possible just in my imagination?

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

Mining would be impossible since their hashrate percentage is rather small. But it's different case if someone propose hard fork which add Emergency Difficulty Adjustment (EDA).


I agree, i expect there are few brave people who risk using satellite internet (which is harder to be blocked/controlled).

Where did you get that from?

The news I heard was that Russia is banning the social media and other sites that banned Russia in a 69 act when they started censoring everything that came out of Russia that was negating their propaganda.

It won't happen but even if it did bitcoin wouldn't care since it is a global currency that is not originating from a single place.

As much as I understand the Bitcoin network, it would basically just adjust the difficulty appropriately and it would become easier to mine the rest of the Bitcoin. As far as price goes, I think, unless demand for Bitcoin goes up, we will see more supply with a stable demand. So this and we would also definitely see a lot of FUD and that would scare the price down. But there is no point in speculating just yet. Bitcoin is, was and always will be a safe bet as an investment option. Even if WW3 were to break out.

So, no worries just yet.