A comprehensive study conducted by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance has unveiled significant insights into Bitcoin’s ability to withstand physical infrastructure failures. Over an 11-year period, researchers analyzed data from 68 confirmed submarine cable disruptions to assess the robustness of the Bitcoin network.
The findings indicate that Bitcoin can endure substantial disruptions, with 72% to 92% of global submarine cables needing to fail simultaneously before the network experiences major node disconnections. This research comes at a time when global infrastructure vulnerabilities are under scrutiny, particularly in light of ongoing tensions in regions like the Strait of Hormuz.
The study demonstrates that Bitcoin’s network is designed to degrade gracefully rather than collapse under pressure. Out of the 68 cable failure events examined, more than 87% resulted in less than a 5% impact on nodes. The most significant incident occurred in March 2024 when disturbances off Côte d’Ivoire damaged multiple cables, leading to a 43% node impact in the region but only affecting 5-7 Bitcoin nodes worldwide, a mere 0.03% of the total network.
Interestingly, the research also highlighted that the correlation between cable failures and Bitcoin’s price was negligible, with a coefficient of -0.02, indicating that daily price fluctuations overshadow infrastructure disruptions.
A critical aspect of the study is the distinction between random cable failures and targeted attacks. While random failures require a substantial percentage of cables to be compromised, targeted attacks on key chokepoint cables can drastically reduce the threshold to just 20%. Furthermore, targeting major hosting providers like Hetzner, OVH, Comcast, Amazon, and Google Cloud could achieve similar impacts with only 5% of routing capacity removed.
The paper also tracks Bitcoin’s evolving resilience over time. Initially, from 2014 to 2017, the network demonstrated high resilience due to its geographical diversity, with a critical failure threshold of around 0.90-0.92. However, this resilience declined between 2018 and 2021 as the network became more concentrated, hitting a low of 0.72 in 2021 amid peak mining activity in East Asia. Following the China mining ban, resilience partially recovered to 0.88 in 2022 but settled at 0.78 in 2025.
Another noteworthy finding is the role of TOR in enhancing network resilience. As of 2025, 64% of Bitcoin nodes utilize TOR, obscuring their physical locations. The researchers tested the assumption that this obscurity might indicate fragility and found the opposite. TOR infrastructure is primarily located in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, countries with robust submarine cable networks. This geographical concentration complicates any potential disruption attempts.
The researchers describe this phenomenon as ‘adaptive self-organization,’ noting that the Bitcoin community has increasingly adopted censorship-resistant infrastructure in response to events like Iran’s internet shutdown in 2019 and the Myanmar coup in 2021. This shift has inadvertently strengthened the network against physical disruptions.
With current geopolitical tensions affecting infrastructure in the Middle East, the implications of this study are timely. The findings suggest that unless specific cables or hosting providers are deliberately targeted, Bitcoin is likely to remain operational despite potential disruptions.
A recent study from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance highlights Bitcoin's resilience against physical infrastructure disruptions, revealing that substantial simultaneous cable failures are required to impact the network significantly. The research also distinguishes between random failures and targeted attacks, indicating that while Bitcoin can withstand random disruptions, targeted threats pose a more credible risk.