The Chinese government could order to cut all electricity to all mining farms in their country immediately. Should we start clamoring for a POW-change?
that might cause hash rate to plummet and block times to become significantly longer. impatient people might start clamoring for an emergency difficulty adjustment, but a POW change? that wouldn't make sense.
even if the chinese government seized farms, miners, pools, chip fabrication factories, etc and performed sustained 51%/censorship attacks.....the electricity, overhead, and production costs would be real. they couldn't just sustain the attack indefinitely. so ideally there would still be no POW change---we could just let the attackers burn themselves out. i just hope that bitcoiners are patient enough to do that.
Difficulty adjustment is a Hard Fork.
Something the Devs has run away from doing.
If the Chinese Gov cuts the power , you are looking at over 65% of the bitcoin mining disappear overnight.
This alone will freeze the network, and no transactions will be possible for months, unless the hard fork difficulty adjustment occurs.
* Note a Difficulty adjustment change could be keyed in now, no reason to wait for China to smack bitcoin,
most other coins difficult #s adjusts per block, a difficulty adjust every two weeks only , has always been asking for trouble.*
* If Attackers are earning money by doublespending, then they can continue indefinitely by using their ill-gotten gains to fund future attacks.
How many people do you think can wait the 1 or 2 months needed before a utility disconnects the miners for non-payment.*
The Traders will cause a blood letting like you never dreamed possible, in that scenario.
Anyone that waits patiently will hold nothing but broken dreams.
if the network drops 65% transactions dont freeze they slow by a factor of 3.
so block time turns into 30 minute not 10 minute . the worst case is it is done on day 1 of a diff jump.
so a 14 day wait is 42 days. it is not a big deal. it would be a good thing as it would show the network is a tough thing to kill.
also i estimate more then 20eh of gear is shut off that can be turned on.
which means the drop would be from 100 eh to 35 eh add back 20 eh and we are at 55eh.
which worst case means diff wait of 13 or 14 days will stretch to only 25 - 30 days.