[paulhodge]

Big difference is that Bitcoin has all the right conditions for a bubble pop. If someone did a 51% attack, this would cause people to lose trust in the currency, everyone would cash out, creating a bank run, which would be a self-accelerating process that drives the price even lower. So even if the network recovered the next day, it would take a long long time to rebuild that trust.

Whereas with the internet, if someone is able to knock out critical infrastructure one day, engineers would figure out a way to fix/reroute it, get it working a few days later, and everyone would happily log back on as soon as it's working. Although maybe they would throw out their "smart" coffee machines and etc.

[Klathmon]

I disagree that everyone would cash out.

There have been crashes of bitcoin before. None "to zero" but pretty substantial, and not everyone "cashes out" right away.

[paulhodge]

Sure you're right, some people would stay invested, some people would even re-invest during the price drop (dead cat bounce).

But the previous crashes weren't caused by any real news of a significant weakness of Bitcoin, so if there was news like that, then the crash would be worse than we've seen.