What if a global ransomware attack cripples banking payment rails?
Ransomware on payment rails is a crypto-liquidity and operational shock: stablecoin/exchange settlement stress hits ETH and SOL hardest, BTC follows, and equities take a smaller operational-risk knock. Rhymes with the 2014 Mt. Gox collapse (crypto-specific liquidity freeze) more than a macro bank run. Forward angle: with stablecoins now systemic plumbing, a rails freeze could break the peg before it hits price — watch USDT/USDC basis, not just spot. The positive financial_conditions root mis-signs an easing as a tightening/stress event.
Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 1–3 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. A coordinated ransomware attack cripples global banking/payment rails. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Financial conditions ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ · Crypto confidence ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.