Nearly three-quarters of undersea fiber-optic internet cables would need to fail before Bitcoin sees major disruption, according to a Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance study released this year.
In a paper first published in February and revised March 12, researchers Wenbin Wu and Alexander Neumueller analyzed Bitcoin P2P network data from 2014 to 2025 alongside 68 verified subsea cable fault events.
How much cable failure matters
The researchers estimated a critical threshold of 0.72 to 0.92 for random cable removal.
This implies 72% to 92% of “inter-country” submarine cables would have to fail before more than 10% of Bitcoin nodes disconnect.
They also found the network is more exposed to targeted disruption of specific cable chokepoints.
The study described targeted attacks as “an order of magnitude more effective,” with a critical failure threshold of 0.05 to 0.20.
Tor and “invisible” nodes
The paper said Tor routing “creates a compound barrier to disruption,” citing relay infrastructure concentrated in well-connected European countries.
The study stated:
“Tor adoption increases resilience under current relay geography rather than introducing hidden fragility.”
It also reported that 64% of Bitcoin nodes are effectively “invisible” to researchers due to Tor obfuscation.
Price impact and mining geography
The researchers concluded 87% of the 68 historical cable events produced less than a 5% node impact.
They also found near-zero correlation between cable events and bitcoin’s price, reporting a statistically insignificant correlation coefficient of −0.02.
The paper added that geographic diversification of mining “has not materially altered infrastructure resilience,” which it said is driven more by physical cable topology than by hashrate distribution.
