Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Topic OP
Is this scenario possible? [sudden drop of hashing power in far future]
by
bitcoinator
on 27/11/2013, 09:37:06 UTC
Sorry if this has been discussed. I'd like to know your opinion about the following scenario:

1. Bitcoin price increases up to 1M USD
2. Heavy investments in Bitcoin mining stabilize the mining profitability at ~11% per year or ~0.03% per day.
3. Professional miners with big efficient mining farms control 99% of hashing power.
4. Let's say median miner spends 1 000 000 USD daily to mine 1 030 000 USD in BTC and to receive a profit of 30 000 USD every day.
5. Suddenly Bitcoin price crashes from 1M USD downto 100K USD and stays there for a while.
6. Now median miner spends 1 000 000 USD daily to mine 103 000 USD in BTC and receives a daily loss of 897 000 USD.
7. Miners won't tolerate such losses for a long time. They will shut down their mining farms and sell them for cheap (if they can).
8. Bitcoin network will loose 90% of its mining power. It will take 100 minutes in average to generate new block. And it will take months to adjust the difficulty.
9. Moreover somebody can easily do a 51% (...90%) attack using the hardware bought from big miners.

Does it sound like a possible scenario that could happen naturally or provoked intentionally?