To all you smart bitcoiners, what would you do if your area lost power for six months, or some other disaster prevented you from accessing the blockchain? How would you pay for what you need? How can an economy based on bitcoin be resilient to local blockchain outages?
I'm not trying to criticize Bitcoin here, I do genuinely like it, I just can't un-see this problem.
An economy based on bitcoin would have extreme incentive to keep electricity and internet on all the time, and fix it quickly if something happens. All the more reason to want bitcoin adoption world wide. The more that incentive spreads the better it is for humanity.
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it's a good question and an interesting problem.
you will always need computers to sign, send and verify transactions. but these operations are lightweight such that you don't need much power. all of the above can be accomplished via something as simple as a raspberry pi connected to a solar array.
the real challenge IMO is robust, censorship resistant bandwidth. bootstrapping a node requires downloading and verifying the entire ~500gb chain. you can trust someone else's node, but this may not be wise in an adversarial environment (and in bitcoin land we do like our "worst case scenario" thought experiments). it's even trickier when talking about lightning as nodes must be online to receive payments.
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My emergency and bug out kits contain food, water/water purification, first aid, compass and analog maps, cash, ammo, plus silver coins and some amount of gold. However, I also have barter networks I already nurture. If shit hits the fan I may have to adapt, but I will not have to start new from some lost, useless situation
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Your mention of gold and silver gave me an idea: what if Bitcoin were our "internet money" ­— that is, what we used for making online payments ­— and then gold and silver were what we used face-to-face?
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Not face-to-face, but emergency barter money. bitcoin still works face-to-face except for the shtf scenario.
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Yes, but gold/silver currency has advantages over Bitcoin:
  1. Untracability by default (even if you mark a coin, you can't tell who owns it when you lose sight of it)
  2. No TX fees
  3. Doesn't require network access, so you can exchange currency in the middle of nowhere even without cell data
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LOL! No transaction fees! Ever heard of the premium? 😂😂😂
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I recommend you do more research before making declarative statements about in general, but especially when saying something has advantages over bitcoin.
Go buy some gold or silver, and then tell me your thoughts.
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41 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 20 May
what would you do if your area lost power for six months
If the power is out for long enough, I think you won't be able to pay with cash, too. Stores need power for all kinds of things like registers, lighting and refrigerators. I imagine they would close pretty early if not immediately.
Additionally, long-term power outages are emergency situations if you live in a region that depends a lot on power. There will be looting. You won't think about your bitcoin in such a situation1. You will care about food, shelter and being safe from your biggest threat: other humans in survival mode.
Footnotes
  1. except that you know they are more safe than any other bearer asset
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Depends on the reason for lost power for six months - if it's so serious, going somewhere else might be better?
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