From my own perspectives, the block chain split was of zero consequence. If it were not for the activity on this forum at the time, and my interaction with this forum, I (personally) wouldn't have even noticed. The same would have been true for most users who either don't spend bitcoins on a daily basis or don't fret over the time to confirm. Once users are competing for blockspace, a 24 hour long time to confirm will become more commonplace for much more mundane reasons.
I think the fact that someone had a transaction with six confirmation that was then undone was extremely significant.
Well, you have a point there.
And the price crash wasn't even the worst crash that I've seen since I've been here. On a percentage basis, dropping from about $250 to about $50 over the course of a week or two isn't as bad as dropping from $32 to $2 in 2011 (2012?), although it happened much faster.
True, but it
happened at a time when Bitcoin's rise was big news and there was a high rate of influx of new users. These are the conditions under which you would never expect such a drop. And it happened due to a failure at a choke point whose significant was not, I think, generally recognized.
Those are exactly the conditions that I would expect a big drop, due to the eventual popping of a bubble. And that is largely what happened. Honestly, I expected it weeks before it happened, and lost a small fortune short selling with a stop-loss limit at $72. It never eeven got back down to where I thought it made fundamental sense, so I would have lost it anyway.
But I agree with your point. You can see these events as Earth shattering or meaningless. The important thing is that bad things happened and Bitcoin barely noticed. So if you're worried about bad things happening, the evidence suggests that Bitcoin will survive.
It's much like the point about violence and terrorrism; terror attacks make big news but not really big body counts, as a nominally "free" US citizen is 9 times more likely to die by the unwarrented actions of a police officer than a terrorist.
Really, the perception of risks are out of prooportion with the reality of those same risks.
The issue isn't any one single double spend attack.
The issue is a long-term, ongoing double spend attack where the attacker holds a significant amount of hash.