On a practical matter, a sudden drop in the value of bitcoin could make it literally impossible to by, as the resulting drop in hash power could mean that no new block is ever mined, so the bitcoin transaction giving you ownership is never proccessed.
In the long run, as long as even a single person has an interesting in mining, a new block will be mined (on average) every ten minutes.
We recently saw a 50% drop in hashrate. Bitcoin kept on producing blocks. https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/109315/bitcoin-hashrate-...
Further, as miners turn their machines off, even before a difficulty adjustment, it becomes profitable (in btc terms) for those of us with ancient machines to resume mining. Our unprofitable machines suddenly become profitable.
> On a practical matter, a sudden drop in the value of bitcoin could make it literally impossible to buy.
Nope. Most buying happens on exchanges. The flood of liquidity wouldn't suddenly evaporate. And blocks would still be produced as explained above.
Btw. We've had ~90% drops in ₿ price before. https://twitter.com/ChartsBtc/status/1418395476190064645?s=1...
If BTC goes to zero, I will buy the remaining 14 million floating coins for $0.00000001/BTC.
Of course, there are others like me, and this will bootstrap value >$0
What we need to brace ourselves for is it going to infinity. There are not that many coins left, and when people realize this, they will run for the exchanges.
The exchanges, of course, are all actually insolvent, as over the years fraud, loss, theft and just plain being a dumbass has made their liabilities impossible to satisfy. There is not enough coins.
Not your keys, not your coin. Stash em away asap!