A hypothetical global internet outage would fracture Bitcoin's network into isolated partitions, leading to divergent blockchains based on regional hashrate distribution. While the protocol would survive through automatic reconciliation upon reconnection, user experience could suffer from paused services and orphaned transactions. In a permanent scenario, Bitcoin might evolve into multiple independent networks.
The analysis from CryptoSlate outlines how Bitcoin would handle a sudden collapse of key internet hubs like Frankfurt, London, Virginia, Singapore, and Marseille. This would split the network into three main partitions: the Americas with 45% of hashrate, Asia and Oceania with 35%, and Europe, Africa, and the Middle East with 20%.
Block production would continue locally, with the Americas adding about 2.7 blocks per hour, Asia and Oceania around 2.1, and Europe and Africa approximately 1.2. After one hour, ledgers would differ by double-digit blocks; after half a day, gaps would reach the low hundreds; and after a full day, hundreds of blocks, exceeding routine reorganization ranges. Transactions would remain confined to local mempools, preventing cross-partition propagation, and fee markets would become regional, rising fastest in smaller hashrate areas with high demand.
Exchanges and custodians would pause withdrawals and on-chain settlements due to lost global finality, while Lightning Network counterparties face uncertainty in commitment transactions. Upon restoring connectivity, nodes would reorganize to the chain with the most cumulative work, potentially orphaning dozens to hundreds of minority-partition blocks. Full economic normalization could lag, requiring hours for mempool rebuilds and human reviews of fiat rails and compliance.
In less severe cases, like 30% hashrate isolation, six-confirmation payments become at risk after about three hours and 20 minutes. Near 50/50 splits could lead to stochastic outcomes on reconnection. Resilience tools such as satellite downlinks, radio relays, and mesh networks might mitigate forks by leaking some blocks and transactions across partitions.
Operational advice includes halting cross-partition settlements, treating confirmations as provisional, and adjusting fee estimations. For a permanent fracture, such as in a prolonged conflict, partitions would adjust difficulty independently after 2016-block retargets, with block times initially deviating. Each chain would issue subsidies separately, exceeding the 21 million cap globally and creating incompatible BTC assets. Security would weaken in smaller partitions, exchanges would regionalize with diverging prices, and reconciliation would require social coordination to select a canonical chain.
The protocol endures by design, but economic finality relies on global propagation, potentially causing temporary usability collapses and fee shocks.