Almost nine out of 10 underwater internet cable failures over the past decade caused little to no disruption to the Bitcoin network, according to new academic research.
Random Failures Vs. Targeted Cuts
The study, published in February by researchers Wenbin Wu and Alexander Neumueller of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, tracked 68 confirmed cable fault events between 2014 and 2025.
Data shows 87% of those incidents knocked fewer than 5% of Bitcoin nodes offline. Price impact was essentially nonexistent — the correlation coefficient between cable failures and Bitcoin’s market value came in at -0.02, a figure researchers describe as statistically insignificant.
The study is the first of its kind to look at Bitcoin’s exposure to physical internet infrastructure over a long stretch of time.
Source: Wenbin Wu, Alexander Neumueller
Using a country-level cascade model built on peer-to-peer network data, the researchers set out to answer a question that has circled the crypto community for years: what would actually happen to Bitcoin if the internet took a serious hit?
Their answer, at least for random failures, is: not much. Between 72% and 92% of all submarine cables connecting countries worldwide would have to fail before more than 10% of Bitcoin nodes go dark.
Subsea cables carry roughly 99% of international internet traffic. Getting to that failure threshold would require a catastrophic, near-total collapse of global internet infrastructure.But the picture changes sharply when the failure is deliberate.
Image shows map of the world's undersea cable network. Source: SubmarineCableMap
Chokepoints Present A Different Problem
Targeted attacks on specific cable chokepoints could achieve serious disruption with far fewer cuts. Officials said researchers found the critical failure threshold drops to between 5% and 20% when attacks are aimed at high-traffic junction points — a threat the paper describes as roughly an order of magnitude more potent than random failures.
That gap between random and targeted risk is the sharpest finding in the report. It suggests Bitcoin’s exposure to physical infrastructure is not evenly distributed.
Some cables matter far more than others, and a well-coordinated strike on the right connections could do damage that years of accidental outages have not.
Geographic diversity in Bitcoin mining, which expanded significantly after China’s 2021 crackdown pushed operations to other countries, has done little to change this picture.
Reports indicate that infrastructure strength tracks physical cable routes, not where miners happen to be located.
Tor Adds A Layer Of Complexity
One factor working in Bitcoin’s favor is the widespread use of Tor, the privacy-focused routing system that bounces traffic through a chain of servers to mask a user’s location.
Based on reports, 64% of all Bitcoin nodes are effectively invisible to outside observers because of Tor adoption — a detail that complicates any effort to map and target the network.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
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