How did the European blackout affected the Bitcoin Network?

The mass blackout that affected European countries Spain, France and Portugal on April 28, 2025 tested the resilience of various infrastructure, including the Bitcoin Red (BTC).

The lack of electricity impacted millions of users and homescausing conflicts in telephone networks, Internet access, as well as in public transport, flights, operations in hospitals, banks and traditional shops, among many others.

In that context, Pedro Sánchez, Spanish president, explained that the authorities investigate the causes and that «no hypothesis is ruled out.» In addition, António Costa, president of the European Council, specified that «There are no indications of a cyber attack».

And this blackout, how did Bitcoin affected?

The blackout in those countries in Europe led to the Miners of Bitcoin who were operating there have had to cease their activities, given the lack of connectivity to the electrical network and the Internet.

According to Data from the Czech Mining Pool, the Computational Power (hashrate) of the Bitcoin Network registered a slight decrease with respect to April 27, from the 822 EH/s (exahashes per second) to 807 eh/s. However, This setback does not seem to be linked, to a large extent, to the mass blackout in Europe.

That metric, which measures the total processing power dedicated to mining in the network, did not show a significant reduction after the blackout, despite the fact that Bitcoin hashrate has been experiencing a gradual fall since April 17.

In such a way, that data shows that The miners of the affected countries do not concentrate a relevant portion of global computing power. At the time of this wording, Spain and France contribute 0.05 EH/s to the total computing power (0.006%), while Portugal contributes 0.2 EH/s (0.025%), according to Hashotrate Index.

Miners located in countries such as the United States, Russia and China lead Bitcoin mining with estimated shares of 36%, 15% and 13% respectively. If the blackout, on the other hand, would have taken place in any of these sites, the consequences, perhaps, would have been different.

For example, not for an incident of this nature, but by the government decision of China in 2021, which prohibited BTC mining, produced a Redistribution of Global Hashratesince the miners moved towards other regions. The prohibition in that Asian country, which began in May 2021, led to the BTC hashrato for around 165 eh/sa the 98 eh/s, according to Brains, according A 40%drop.

Bitcoin’s resilience in the absence of electricity

Despite energy interruptions in Europe, the Bitcoin Network demonstrated its ability to continue working thanks to its decentralized design. This is due to the fact that the nodes and miners distributed globally maintained the active network, ensuring that the blocks continued to be under 10 minutes and the confirmed transactions.

Additionally, cryptootics, from their X account, explained that users in the affected regions had the possibility of transactions with BTC even without internet access or electricityan aspect that highlights the technological solutions developed to operate in adverse conditions.

Projects such as Locha Mesh, Txtenna and Kryptoradio have shown that Bitcoin is possible using radio waves and networks mesh (Mesh networks in Spanish), technologies that allow communication between devices without depending on traditional internet connections.

The networks meshfor example, they work connecting close devices to each other to form a decentralized network, while radio waves, such as those used by Lora or Gotanna antennas, can transmit data to long distances with minimal energy consumption.

These solutions usually require specific configurations, such as the use of a complete Bitcoin Core node, the most used software in Bitcoin that discharges and verifies the entire network, or open source wallets such as electrum, which allows you to manage private keys and sign transactions locally.

In addition, companies such as Blockstream and Gotenna have developed systems that take advantage of satellite signals and networks mesh to send BTC transactions. Blockstream satellite, for example, Transmit network data through satellitesallowing users to receive information from the network and prepare transactions without internet connection.

Although these technologies represent a technical challenge for the average user, since they require specialized hardware and certain knowledge for their configuration, They offer a viable alternative in chaotic situations As a mass blackout, where traditional communication infrastructures usually collapse.

Meanwhile, traditional banks and shops faced significant interruptions in the regions affected by the blackout. ATMs, electronic payment systems and online bank platforms, which depend on electricity and the Internet, stopped temporarily operating in those regions, affecting local users.