A research team at the University of Cambridge has published an intriguing discovery. After analyzing 11 years of Bitcoin network data and 68 cases of submarine cable failures, they found that submarine cable cuts do not impact Bitcoin as much as we might think.

In March 2024, when seven cables were cut during a submarine disturbance off the coast of Ivory Coast, the regional internet impact jumped to over 11,000. But what about Bitcoin? Only about five nodes were affected, accounting for just 0.03% of the entire network, and there was no price fluctuation or consensus disruption. This is symbolic.

According to the study, 68 of the 385 cable failure reports matched verifiable outages, but 87% of those involved less than 5% node variation. The average impact was -1.5%, with a median of -0.4%. The correlation between node outages and Bitcoin price was nearly zero (r = -0.02). In other words, even cable failures that make headlines have little effect on a decentralized network.

But where is the real vulnerability? The researchers modeled Bitcoin as a layered network: the physical submarine cable connection layer, the routing infrastructure layer, and the Bitcoin peer-to-peer overlay layer. Randomly cutting cables would require between 72% and 92% of international cables to fail to reach a threshold where more than 10% of nodes are cut off. Almost all would be down.

But what if the attack is strategic? Targeting high-centrality cables could lower this ratio to 20%. Even more effective is targeting top Autonomous Systems (ASNs). Removing just 5% of routing capacity could reach the threshold.

What’s noteworthy here is the scenario the researchers pointed out: not actual cable cuts, but hosting provider outages or coordinated regulatory actions. The identified top networks include Hetzner, OVHcloud, Comcast, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud. As of March 2026, out of 23,150 accessible nodes, Hetzner hosts 869, Comcast and OVH each host 348, Amazon 336, and Google 313.

However, this isn’t simply “five providers can destroy Bitcoin.” Even if the public network is completely removed, Tor supports most of the network, so most nodes would still operate. But coordinated actions could cause connection shocks that wouldn’t occur with random cable failures.

Tor’s role is particularly interesting. Usage of Tor, which was nearly zero in 2014, reached 23% in 2021, 52% in 2022, and 63% by March 2026. This increase coincides with censorship events in Iran, Myanmar, and China’s mining bans. Node operators didn’t intentionally shift to censorship-resistant infrastructure; it naturally adapted under regulatory pressure.

Including Tor relays in the model yielded even more interesting results. The four-layer model consistently produced a critical failure threshold 0.02 to 0.10 higher than the model with only the public network. Attackers trying to disrupt both the public network and Tor circuits simultaneously would need to remove even more infrastructure.

The Chinese factor also cannot be ignored. Bitcoin’s resilience index hit a low of 0.72 in 2021, coinciding with peak hash power concentration. In 2019, 74% of hash power was concentrated in East Asia, but after China’s mining ban in 2022 and infrastructure decentralization, the threshold rose to 0.88. Regulatory pressures inadvertently promoted geographic redistribution and adoption of censorship-resistant infrastructure, increasing the network’s robustness.

Concerns about submarine cables will persist. Geopolitical tensions are evident in Baltic Sea surveys, European Commission security toolkits, and Russian reports. But for Bitcoin, historical data tells a different story: most cable events are just noise.

The truly critical infrastructure challenge is whether policy coordination, cloud service shutdowns, or hosting restrictions can cause shocks at the ASN level. Coordinated actions pose a far greater risk than natural disasters.

Bitcoin is not as fragile as critics imagine, but it’s not completely decoupled from infrastructure either. The network shows a graceful degradation rather than a catastrophic collapse. Censorship pressures have driven infrastructure adoption, strengthening resilience against coordinated risks. Without submarine actions or warfare, a few coordinated actions within a small network could cause temporary disruptions. But this is not an inherent vulnerability of Bitcoin; rather, it reflects modern infrastructure dependence.