[freejulian]

> Any reason why the Venezuelan Government would continue to keep SMS BTC transactions live?

How would they stop them?

I could send the transaction via carrier pigeon if I really needed to. I can encode them however I please.

[Jtsummers]

Depending on the level of control (and competency) the government has over telecom systems, they could easily block SMS transactions by scanning the data stream (SMS is sent in the clear over the network).

> I could send the transaction via carrier pigeon if I really needed to. I can encode them however I please.

For fucks sake, this bullshit needs to die. People have made claims like this for years now. It's bullshit. People used to say, "I don't need a network connection, I can conduct transactions on paper." Leaving out the detail that at some point it has to get into the bitcoin network itself.

Bitcoin is essentially useless for people without an internet connection.

[freejulian]

> People have made claims like this for years now. It's bullshit. People used to say, "I don't need a network connection, I can conduct transactions on paper." Leaving out the detail that at some point it has to get into the bitcoin network itself.

I think the claim has forever been that there are infinitely many ways to securely encode a transaction. The point is to get the transaction outside of whatever hostile territory you're in.

[dragontamer]

You do realize that Venezuela has widespread censorship laws in place, including the ability to shut-off communications (Internet, Phone, everything) on a moment's notice?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Venezuela#Curren...

If you want to set up a carrier-pigeon based BTC system. Be my guest. It literally would take something on that level to defeat the censorship regime that Venezuela has placed on its people. I doubt that a "Bitcoin over IP over Carrier Pigeon" solution would work on a wide scale however, mostly because Pigeons die and it takes a lot of effort to train and feed those birds.

I mean, if the Pigeon that was carrying your transaction was eaten by a fox, what then? Its clearly not a good solution. It seems to me that it'd be basically impossible to figure out or verify the balance of a BTC wallet if you were waiting the several days it'd take for a pigeon to fly around.

Just publishing the current Black-Market exchange rate of USD <---> Venezuelan Bolivar is hard enough. I have my doubts that BTC would work under the censorship-heavy Venezuelan regime. And I have severe doubts that the crypto-libertarian dreamworld of BTC would ever become sanctioned by the current Venezuelan Government.

But that's my viewpoint as an outsider. I admit that I don't live in Venezuela, but it seems like they have a lot of problems and "Bitcoin over IP over Carrier Pidgeon" won't be able to solve.