Actually a "death spiral" is basically built-in to bitcoin.
If the value stays at this level for a while and the hashpower increases so that miners rely on this level of income, a drop of say 30% could mean that almost all miners are running in the red (except those with free electricity). The resulting long block times could cause the price to crash more, discouraging even more miners, until a block is just never produced again. The difficulty adjustment requires 2016 blocks to be mined.
It will inevitably be forked to try and save it, but that might not take off...
BTC will die eventually--albeit slowly. $26 transaction fees are insane and unsustainable imho. My money is on proof of stake like Ardor.
I'd like to see something with GBI built in, and maybe less deflationary. Not completely, as it's nice when saving money makes it worth more, but the only reason to have btc now is to hodl and make more ... till it's worth shit... and you can't sell it at all.
I mean really you can't even really use it for utility any more... Say I wanted to buy hosting with bitcoin... I pay $15 a month for hosting, so that's 15 in btc, PLUS $26 to send the btc? well fuck that.. nvm.. guess I'll just hodl like everyone else...
If the value stays at this level for a while and the hashpower increases so that miners rely on this level of income, a drop of say 30% could mean that almost all miners are running in the red (except those with free electricity). The resulting long block times could cause the price to crash more, discouraging even more miners, until a block is just never produced again. The difficulty adjustment requires 2016 blocks to be mined.
It will inevitably be forked to try and save it, but that might not take off...