A Severed Undersea Internet Cable Can Bring Bitcoin to its Knees

Over the past few years, the “Russian threat” has become a lot more prevalent than ever before. Specifically, the United States is concerned about how Russia could affect the everyday lives of American citizens. Two years ago, there was grave concern over how Russia could sever undersea internet cables. Should that happen again, Bitcoin users all over the world will be impacted as well.

Severed Undersea Internet Cables Could be Problematic

Before we go any further, it is important to keep in mind Russia has little to gain by purposefully severing undersea internet cables. In 2015, the US government grew quite concerned over this issue, as Russian submarines were floating in the vicinity of these undersea internet cables for no reason. It would take a bit of planning to sever a cable, but it is something that could happen at any time.

For the time being, there is no evidence to suggest Russia is planning such a move by any means. After all, cutting these cables would disconnect large parts of the world from the Internet. Repairing these cables is a time-consuming and a costly process. It could take days, if not weeks until such a connection would be restored. Especially if semi-hostile submarines were in the area, as that would only complicate matters even more.

Over the past few years, we have seen multiple undersea internet cables getting damaged. In most cases, this is the result of ship anchors or natural disasters. No malicious intent has ever been recorded regarding these incidents, as far as we know. Should any nation target these cables specifically, it is impossible to tell what would happen. Some cables are located at greater depths, which also makes them much more difficult to access and repair.

If such a cable were to be severed – on purpose or by accident – the repercussions would be quite severe. Undersea internet cables are vital to the world’s economy and communication. In fact, these cables are reportedly responsible for transmitting around 95% of global communications. Severing such a connection would result in global internet problems, among other things.

It is evident such a catastrophic event would severely impact Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as well. Since we all need a connection to the internet to interact with cryptocurrency, it is possible the network would come to a standstill all of a sudden. This could prove to be fatal for smaller altcoin ecosystems, even though Bitcoin would be impacted quite severely as well. Mining would become impossible, no one can send transactions, and there would be no further progress whatsoever.

For the time being, it is in no nation’s best interest to cut these undersea cables by any means. Should it happen, every aspect of our daily lives will be impacted, including Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Our society relies on the Internet for virtually everything we do these days, especially when it comes to finance and communication. We can only hope Russia – or any other nation – never decided to purposefully cut such a cable.

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