Thread by @balajis

Good news: the reduction [1] in Bitcoin mining hashrate from China is visible but survivable. There's a lot of mining capacity elsewhere.

Bad news: blocks may be slower for a while [2]. But holders are unaffected.
[1] bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bit…
[2] bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bit…

Notes:

1) One day charts are highly volatile and we need to see where everything averages out. Some kind of drop looks real, but capacity may come online in other places.

2) The first chart (hashrate) is over years, the second is over months - otherwise you can't see the blip.

One somewhat vexing thing:

(a) when hashrate drops a lot, you want a quick difficulty adjustment
(b) but when hashrate drops a lot, blocks take longer to mine, so difficulty adjustment takes longer to come

Not ∞ time. This site *estimates* 26 days.
bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/

The reason I bolded the word "estimate" is that we are dividing noisy random variables. We'll need to see where hashrate actually settles out after all the Chinese miners shut down and maybe relocate.

Still, while a 60-80% drop is a real annoyance, it's not fatal.

In general, the global decentralization of Bitcoin mining shows a way to robustify against the famous Thanksgiving Turkey Chart.

Even the Chinese state going after mining (not really a surprise) is only causing a temporary rise in block times.

So far, pretty antifragile!