Topic: What will happen to the Bitcoin network if Russia blocks access to the internet? (Read 866 times)

It is difficult for us to predict the actions of governments and therefore, we don't know what the possible scenario of events will be. I don't exclude the possibility of blocking the internet in Russia. Why do you exclude such a possibility of events? In China, for example, they managed to implement this and now they have an ecosystem. As you remember, their mining also ceased to exist. If the network is blocked in Russia, events will develop in much the same way as in China: first, the hashrate will fall, and then it will recover after moving miners to other regions with favorable conditions.

The truth is that I do not create a scenario where Russia blocks the internet, under no circumstances will it do so, since it has a series of sanctions that do not allow it to be free as they have always been, on the contrary, through the internet it is the only way out they have to be able to access certain privileges and I imagine the excessive use of VPN to be able to enter certain sites or platforms because I understand that the sanctions extend to internet sites, payment systems and anything that has to do with giving ease for them. That is why everything that is with btc or cryptocurrencies, or sites that give them access such as Exchanges, casinos, must reign. among others.

The point is not how well Putin and his entourage are able to block the population's access to objective information, including about the progress and results of the war of conquest they unleashed in Ukraine. The very fact that such unprecedented measures for civilized countries are applied in Russia is important. And information about a possible shutdown of the Internet in Russia, most likely, indicates that the measures taken earlier did not achieve the desired effect. Apparently, they will not dare to turn off the Internet in Russia, since information about the events in Ukraine is rapidly spreading in the regions of Russia, and this extreme measure becomes meaningless.

Maybe for some time period the hash generated out of Russian mining firms gets lowered. Russia won't restrict the usage of internet. If Russia has been affected out of the bitcoin, then it might've taken measures to stop the internet usage within the country. More sanctions were on Russia, and this has affected the country's economy. Slowly Russia have been making plans and the usage of bitcoin have helped them leave the country and work in a completely normal region.

Nothing will occur to crypto currency (Bitcoin) but the people who are Trading with Bitcoin, and those who are into the business of buying and selling will also shut down. And that will cause Immigration. The crypto users in Russia will travel to another nearby Countries to do their business. And also that will increase the economy of the nearby Countries.
What will happen is that Russia economy will also shut down. And Russia might even lost the war, because most of the nuclear weapons are connected to the internet. They are control from ip address. Therefore, Russia being one of the highest technological Country in the whole world will not shut down her internet but will only restrict some areas of operation. So the people can use the areas that there is network. But remember, shutting down of network will never affect Bitcoin but the people.

Bitcoin is increasingly attractive because it can adapt to conditions and needs, this is what makes us never worry about the future of bitcoin, even when the war is then bitcoin is always attractive than fiat or other assets, bitcoin will continue to be valuable and attacks on bitcoin never succeed until now.

Your problem is that you believe the news that publishes the wrong information. These services work in Russia, they are blocked for some providers, and for some they work even without VPN. VPN allows you to use all foreign services. Also, all blocked VPN services work in Russia.

In Russia, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram have been very quickly turned off lately. Now they intend to turn off the Internet completely. The first thing to ask is, what is the purpose of this?
The Putin regime wants to prolong its existence by hiding from its people the course of the war in Ukraine and the heavy losses of Russians in manpower and equipment, so that the indignation of the people does not turn into destructive riots with the overthrow of power. Putin does not care about his people, and the economy, and the Internet, and cryptocurrency. He is doing everything he can to keep  in power a little longer. Stupid, insane old man... Coffins all the same massively went to all corners of Russia.

I don’t think Russia can be cut off from the internet entirely, so they can still do Bitcoin and crypto-related stuff. Although some major ISPs are pulling out from the Russian market, they still have their own which is RuNet as I have seen in one of the Youtube videos I’ve watched. But sad to say that social media giants like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, etc., are now getting blocked in Russia.

One of the beautiful influencers with around 23 million followers are crying in tears in her last Instagram video before the internet regulator officially cutting off Instagram in their country. But however, I did see in her bio that is a link to her Telegram channel or group. Meaning to say that Telegram is still operational in Russia.

For the worst-case scenario, they should be using VPNs in order to continue posting in various sites who blocked them.

I'm already tired of reading about the Putin regime in Russia. Why is it that when the US attacks other countries, then all the countries of the world stick their tongues up their asses?
Read information about the latest conflicts where the United States participated:

"According to the agency, the United States supplied Ukraine this 2020 year with military products worth 510 million and almost 599 thousand US dollars. At the same time, in previous years, the amounts spent were significantly less - approximately 272.5 million in 2019, 250.8 million in 2018, 207.7 million in 2017 and almost 226.6 million in 2016. For all the time, the total cost of deliveries to Ukraine amounted to about $1.65 billion, since over the previous period - from 1950 to 2015 - the United States supplied weapons and equipment to this country in the amount of more than $179.2 million."
https://ria.ru/20201208/vooruzheniya-1588152746.html

Data in American newspapers
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/04/us-weapons-ukraine/
"The United States has committed about $3 billion in military aid to Ukraine since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014."

Do you not understand that this event has been prepared for more than 6 years?
__
Bitcoin will also work without the Russian Internet.

Not sure about other cryptos, but least in the case of Bitcoin.. You need neither grid power nor internet. Battery backups, solar power, hydro power, distributed nodes across the whole world that can broadcast across satellite  or even radio waves.  There are alternate ways to access it.

Possibly Putin might not have thought of the implications on the other side because as at now, situation of their economy system is bad not to talk of how their currency was devalued, most bitcoin investors leaving the country to seek for a new start, although the effect does not have anything to do with the hash rate as i believe most of the miners too would have seek to relocate to a safety location.

In Russia, the people make their own choice. First, by supporting Putin, then by his passivity, and partly by his support for his attack on Ukraine. Did Putin's regime think that the international community would once again not respond properly to the fact that he decided to seize one of the largest states in Europe by force? It was foolish to think so, because here he had already touched the security of each of the European countries. Therefore, Russia received the toughest sanctions that could destroy Russia itself.
Ukraine also helps in this regard, having put up such stubborn resistance to aggression that Moscow has already realized that the "second army of the world" can lose this war. Therefore, first of all, the Putin regime decided to hide from its people the causes, course and heavy losses in this war. To this end, they have already turned off Facebook and Twitter on their territory, and now they are turning off Instagram. But this is not enough, because the information spreads anyway. Therefore, they are already talking about the complete shutdown of the Internet. We believed that no state would dare to do this. But in order to maintain his power, Putin goes for this. If the Internet is turned off in Russia, taking into account the current sanctions, they will soon be walking around again in sweatshirts and bast shoes, and this will be the second North Korea in terms of its closeness to the world. While there is time, let the Russian people make the right decisions

It certainly has an impact on the hash rate but never I this will be huge. Although we know that Russia has a huge contribution to the crypto market but not all of them are traders, if ever they will block internet connection, they hold their coins. I'm not to think this gonna be forever, transaction will surely resume once the conflict is over, of course. It all just be fine, the people from Russia will also remain calm. We never put this into consideration that we need to sell, no.

I can't see anything here except another Bitcoin fork. Russia has 15 to 20% miners at most, if they separate with their running nodes, it will impact their own economy, because the world will never follow the minority chain, the chain that the majority of people will use will remain stable.

Another thing I heard is that Russia is looking for an alternative to the US dollar, they are hurting themselves by these activities, seems, they are not at all worried about their economy or the future of their people.

Dude decided to invade another nation, a nation in Europe, in year 2022. Do you really think he looks like a person that listens to reason? I mean it is obvious that he is a delusional old demanded dictator that is trying to do the most evil things he can before he dies so that he can get away with it.

What do you think could happen to him? Like what happened to Ghaddafi? Obviously not, he is Putin, he has all the information inside Russia (and most outside) in his ear, and he knows that nothing will ever happen to him, even he loses, or even he wins and kills all Ukrainians. He is old enough to know that he will die, and not too many years later, so he is doing all of this without caring about consequences. It will be Russians that will suffer because of him.

+1
The point is that, as I said, the block would never be 100% effective, although it may seem so in this case, there will always be something that can be done or tried. I suppose that this blocking would come with a law similar to that of false disclosure (news) that brings prison sentences, so will be added to avoid these initiatives.

In any case, without a doubt, there is no comparison, geopolitically speaking, but in my region there are such complex borders in the types of illegal interconnection that are used, that they go hand in hand with the complexity of the border.

Because they work for the government, they are not hackers living in their mom's basement and hacking western accounts, it's more like au authorized army operation. And no "cunning" Russians will be able to bypass a complete blockade, no matter how "cunning" you are you can't do something that is physically impossible.
Show me the hacker that can connect to my broken laptop that has no battery and no internet connection. 



Again, exactly what I was saying
The Chinese government has chosen to do this kind of restriction and poeple there are not afraid to bypass it because the consequences are not that bad.
If the government would want to issue a total blockade they will either go for the same intranet plan or change the sentences for using VPN to a life without parole in a work camp and let's see how many wills till browse western media.
If the government wants to allow poeple a bit of freedom they will do so, if not you can see the level of tolerance in the number of prison years the law comes with.

I wish President Putin is here or has some representatives from his cabinet who can read and tell him all this for him to reconsider his decision. His action will hurt more people than he thinks he will gain. It is the same way the US and their allies should read too. The boycott of the internet in Russia can come from either Putin or the EU as sanction. Time will tell. This war is not only affecting Ukraine, it is also hitting the Russians harshly too. Innocent souls are being massacred in both countries.

The fact that we does not see them does not mean that they are not here. If in North Korean internet is monitored, censored, blocked, prohibited, then how they hell they manage their hackers manage to steal crypto from users and exchanges? Do they do it just for fun or to show their power? If they manage to be in crypto, then cunning Russians will definitely get around blocks.

If Russia does another stupid act and blocks its citizens from accessing the Internet, it will be basically a problem only for Russian citizens. The world can do without part of the Russian cryptocurrency market, and for the Russians who worked in this market, it will be just a disaster. And in general, in my opinion, few people can imagine their life without the Internet. Almost all the knowledge of mankind is already concentrated there, this is a way to instantly spread any news around the world.
That is why the Putin regime decides to take such a step, he wants the citizens of Russia not to know the truth about the causes, course and consequences of the attack on Ukraine. This is, of course, stupid. After all, there are still mobile phones, but insanity in Russia is so strong that they can be reached there.

firewalled is not the same as blocked.
if all ISP's just turned off citizen access(am actual block/shutdown). its a complete different situation to the chinese firewall situation


That would mean a million more people on welfare, at least!

All the freelancers like journalists, coders, translators, all youtubers, streamers, content creators of various types, moderators, game designers, small online stores, everything would go to shit. That would mean serious drop in taxes and gigantic unemployment and migration. Sure, he can do it, but that's going to be the last nail in his coffin.
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well. its all hypothetical. kazahkstan done an actual internet shutdown(not a firewall) for a while, in some small locations.
many variables are at play

most freelancers probably already are on welfare..  unless wellpaid to have some savings to live on thus not need welfare.. after all the welfare system does not kick in and pay out the very first day you sign up.. so unless the internet shutdown is considered to be a lasting event, most wont bother signing up for welfare

by the time people try to claim welfare the internet might be switched back on. so its probably not going to cause much change.

putin might localise it to certain cities or the whole country. he might do it for a day or a week. who knows. lots of variable possibilities. which is why this topic is not a single answer fits all situations.

lots of TV/news stations in russia got cut off, many journalists lost their jobs. but thats because the new/media cut off was deemed more of a long term decision and not a temporary event..
so yes it can affect alot of people. but also might be a temporary thing. who knows what that nut case does next.

but one thing is for sure. the amount of hashpower in russia is not significant enough to cause any significant blocktime confirmation delay for the rest of the network. and wont cause any fork(because no internet means no bloc broadcast/receive within russia).

but yes russia wont switch off the internet for any silly reason. but just know that it can, as can any country. again highlighting kazahkstan as one such example.

Then you've never been to a Russian border. 
This shutdown will probably most likely include Belarus, this is how Belarus borders to western countries looks like:



with the Baltic states, the border is mainly a lake and a river and there are almost no Russian villages there the rest will be with Ukraine, lol, and Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China mainly, champions of freedom and countries known to let poeple host free internet connections.
All the borders have been exactly cut like this strategically, remember it's the Russia we're talking about, this is not a border between Belgium and Netherlands.



Also, if you want to censor those things it's pretty easy, wi-fi jammers are far more effective than the wifi themselves and it will take simple things to block them, not even counting what Russia has on its border for every kind of radio signal already.


Exactly my point. How many will risk it knowing the consequence? 
Internet is somewhat "blocked" in China but that doesn't stop Chinese poeple from posting around, right?
It's not that much about how effective you're blocking poeple but rather the fear poeple have from what might happen next and knowing how all windows in Rusia are deathtraps, teleporting you from your ground-floor apartment to your neighbor on the 6th and throwing you out, I wouldn't bet on poeple trying to go around it.

Well; Let's say that in the first instance those who live on the border, where literally the cities are separated by a few meters, there is cellular connections available, of both countries, in this case one of them would be blocked.
I have been in border places where the Internet connection is better in Mbps that the neighboring and literal country sell these connections with the use of antennas that you can get on ebay and then an antenna point to point  of the other side of the border works.

The point is, I think way if they blocks access to the Internet it, it would not be a 100% blockade, somehow there would be a gap it would open an alternative communication technology, anyone who wanted to update a node could access it in some way. In fact, there could be a Lan network in a part of Russia that will become a WAN because of the fact of having someone nearby on the border.

They do plan on shutting it down to other nations, so connection to the world. Which means internet will keep on existing, but we will just not have Russians connecting to the rest of the world. Obviously they can easily use VPN and still connect, internet can't be limited and governments fail to see that in all around the world, you can even go online as a north Korean person. However, this will not impact crypto at all.

If you are in mining world, you are smart enough to know that you can keep on mining using a VPN connection, even would go satellite connection to some other ISP if you have to. Russians will figure it out and won't be a problem at all.

If russian blocks,all access to the internet,it will stop all connections.More business,will stop it it will not run ,whatever they wanted .So everyone must be alert and think what the should do,for our situations all ,that war in Russian.

As per the latest data Russia has almost 12% contribution towards the hash rate of the total globe. Only if you include Kazakhasthan it reaches upto about 30%. So if Russia blocks the internet then I don't see a very drastic effect of it on the Hash rate, just a 12-15% drop. If you want to take reference I would rather recommend see China, it had almost 50% contribution in the mining hash rate before China completely banned bitcoin mining from its territory even after that since then I have seen hash rate rapidly increasing instead of falling down. This might have owed to the price increase since then. Therefore I am sure Russia block access won't be a major issue for the world.

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.

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.

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.

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.


How many North Koreans you have seen around this forum?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.
 

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

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. 

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

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.

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.

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

That would mean a million more people on welfare, at least!

All the freelancers like journalists, coders, translators, all youtubers, streamers, content creators of various types, moderators, game designers, small online stores, everything would go to shit. That would mean serious drop in taxes and gigantic unemployment and migration. Sure, he can do it, but that's going to be the last nail in his coffin.

Russia is larger than china so the impact is going to be a little stronger than what china experienced. Another thing is that China has only banned bitcoin mining I think? and not totally bitcoin. They also didn't ban the internet, that is why people can still trade and invest in bitcoin.

I am not sure that if the news was true, why would they ban the internet? I thought they are already planning to use bitcoin as an alternative to banks. Did they change their minds or what? internet is too useful to be banned as lots of people now are relying on it. Not only this can bring damage to the price of bitcoin but it can also bring lots of damage to their economy.

I don't think this will happen, but still, if you imagine it, it won't be good, there are a lot of people involved in cryptocurrency in this country and also a lot of miners, but the cryptocurrency as a whole will survive this, because after the ban in China of bitcoin, everything eventually fell into place.

Yeah, mainly the innocent poor citizens in the country will be the ones who are going to be suffering from this. Now they are planning to shut down their internet from the rest of the world? Well, in this case I think things are really going to be getting worse in their country, and like said, the poor ones will suffer it the most, but it would also get to the people at the top, it’s just with time.

But, by the time it gets to those at the top, the poor innocent citizens would have suffered too much from it. Their economy is falling, and they have been banned from a lot of things, and now they want to disconnect their internet, the situation is really messed up for them. I was even thinking that by now that they would have ended this madness.

So far, Russia claims it's not planning to get out of the Internet. I think that realistically Russia is heading to a semi-closed Internet, similar to what's the case in China (lots of banned websites, basically, but not completely inaccessible). China has worked on their version for a long time, but Russia might still be able to pull this off. They're blocking some major social networks already, and considering banning Wikipedia, of all things. But this doesn't mean that there's literally zero access to Facebook in Russia right now, for example, as people know how to use VPNs and can do so successfully. As for mining, I do think that it can be disrupted, but just like when something like this always happens, relocation is possible, and the overall impact on the price should not be high.

I don't think Russia would be doing that anytime soon because a large amount of the population uses internet on daily basis.
Many of their businesses run on internet as well. So may be they won't do such a thing that will cause themselves a harm.
Even if they decide to block internet for some period of time then it won't effect the Bitcoin network majorly.
Since Bitcoin is a decentralized network, the other nodes will be able to validate the blocks and miners from other countries will be able to mine the blocks.
So there's no harm particularly for Bitcoin.

Can you provide the source please ?
I search about the news but found nothing. I don't really think that Russia will talke this way besides the occident sanctions. I wish not meanwhile.
At worst cases, miners can migrate to to other alternative countries like Georgia or Khazakhestan.

I have not heard such news yet. Disconnecting Russia from the general Internet, apparently, is a purely political decision and it is associated with failures in the war with Ukraine and tough international sanctions for this aggression. It seems that the citizens of Russia are going to continue to be kept away from objective information and continue to feed them with their propaganda in order to prolong the agony of the Putin regime. Very quickly, Russia is turning into a pariah country like North Korea.
Together with the sanctions, which are destroying the Russian economy rather quickly, the shutdown of the general Internet will set this country back many decades in development. Well, you have to pay for everything, and for the aggression against Ukraine as well.

You you really think they can do that? The Russians cannot be the next North Korea, their people would honestly wage a war against everyone and the whole nation. This is not something that people would take care of since they have to sell their bitcoins as well and what would their recieve ?? Rubles?? The value of a ruble is nothing now, which does mean that, they have to hold onto something more important, like bitcoins..the government is going to collapse soon.

If they sell everything off they won't be able to ward off the inevitable governance, inflation? Their ties are already cut off and US is banning the oil supplies now, what do you think people will hold onto?

I think all of this is going to end soon, the world cannot afford another North Korea right now. Let the people have their rights, don't make them sell the only thing protecting them right now.

That really be going to expect from them. Major sell-off coming from Russia triggers a huge dump in major exchanges. Well, on the other side, investors from other countries have the chance to buy more and this is an advantage for us.

He'd never realized it for now but sooner or later, he could think about what he's done. It ruins not only for his reputation but he brings the entire country to suffer.

I am pretty sure that there will be panic selloffs from the Russian crypto community if that happens, thus seeing another market decline temporarily before it can recover once again in the future. Putin has completely destroyed the reputation of his own country. The ones who really suffer are the innocent citizens of Russia (especially those who are into crypto). I’ve got beautiful and amazing friends there that I’ve met both physical (in other countries) and virtual.

franky1 is referring to my statement that the main chain will take longer to mine blocks if it loses all the Russian hashrate. He is incorrect, and his analogy is flawed. Let's assume that there is 100 EH/s, and Russian miners control 10 EH/s. The difficulty is set so that with 100 EH/s, blocks take on average 10 minutes. If we then lose all the Russian hashrate, we will drop to 90 EH/s, whereas the difficulty will still be set to target 10 minute block times for 100 EH/s. Until the next difficulty retarget, which will be a maximum of 2016 blocks away, then the average block time will be prolonged.

In the scenario you are talking about, there would initially be a chain split, but not a fork. The rest of the world would mine a chain of blocks, and Russian miners would mine a different chain of blocks. If nothing changed about the two protocols by the time communication was reestablished, then the Russian chain would simply be discarded in favor of the main chain. The other possibility is that one or both chains implement a fork which is not compatible with the other chain, and so they stay as separate coins after communication is reestablished. This could be an adjustment to the difficulty algorithm on the Russian chain, or perhaps some new upgrade on the main chain which is not reflected on the Russian chain.

Note also that it is not the length of the chains which decides which one is the main chain, but rather which one contains more work. Even if the Russians drop the difficulty massively and suddenly mine tens of thousands of blocks, the rest of the world's shorter chain would still be the main chain because it contains more work due to the higher difficulty and higher cumulative hashrate.

Add to this the reduction in russian bitcoin user base. I don't know what share they occupy in the world, but I assume that a tangible part. If people cann't use bitcoin network due to lack of technical capability, then some of these BTC will fall out of the general circulation for an unknown time. The effect on bitcoin network will definitely not be positive.

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

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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).

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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.

If Russia blocks its internet then the people who are in the country will not have access to their crypto assets but coins will remain as is provided no other person has access to these guys private keys. But why would th these guys want to go this route... Are they avoiding to hear what the world has to say about their trespass??

If there is no communication whatsoever between Russia and the rest of the world (highly unlikely), then the network will fork. The main chain the rest of the world follows will lose the Russian hashrate, resulting in longer block times for a maximum of two weeks until the next difficulty retarget. After that, things would continue as normal. The Russian miners would either stop mining altogether or continue to mine on their own minority chain. Once internet communication is reestablished, then either the minority chain would simply be abandoned in favor of the main chain from the rest of the world, or the minority chain would continue as yet another fork of bitcoin.

What is far more likely is that there would still be a handful of nodes which could still communicate to both sides of the divide, and so the whole network would stay in sync. Users in Russia might see more frequent stale blocks and stale chains if it takes them significantly longer to remain synced with the rest of the network.

If Russia blocks the external internet, mining will become impossible in this country. But I know that already now many people involved in cryptocurrency and mining are leaving the country. So if there is a shutdown, by that time the main powers will have already moved to neighbouring countries like Kazakhstan or Georgia. In the last week alone, about 30k people have left for Georgia, mostly from the it sector.

Is Russia the country supplying internet to the world? No. Russia depends on the world than the world depends on Russia. Without Russia, bitcoin will existing, even if the whole of Russia ban bitcoin just like China, bitcoin will still be existing. I do not know what could be worse than when China banned bitcoin but yet bitcoin adoption continues.

All these are part of the effect of the SWIFT ban place on Russia and the whole economy there is downsizing and even users of centralized crypto exchanges account are experiencing ban as about 25000 coinbase user accounts were placed on ban, all international connections Russia has build in the past were been nullified, Russia war given a sound and clear warning before looming into fight against Ukraine. The thing is that those suffering it are the masses who has nothing to do with war, all their businesses have been affected and halted, with or without Russia cryptocurrency still move on steadily just that the innocent citizens who are into crypto will bear the cost after being affected.

2% of nodes/ maybe 20% of miners..(if a russian internet ban includes kazahkstan)
 that is all..

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?