| HN Mirror

Internet is hands-down the most fragile communication backbone a country can have; you can easily blackhole a whole country (satellite included) by just propagating "configuration". Most physical communication can easily be disrupted by cutting cables or by dragging an anchor at the bottom of the ocean.

In contrast, a vlf transmitter can cover the globe consuming the same power as an old tv set. Its not high bandwidth, but enough for teletype.

Everything that requires stable power is able to function in modern warfare scenarios, as long as UN rules apply; ukranians have internet, palestinians have controlled internet, and sudan victims have neither.

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/07/05/how-b...

> ukranians have internet, palestinians have controlled internet, and sudan victims have neither

Well in that case, there are people in Sudan that are using bitcoin[1], especially to help others escape the region.

And there are people in Africa using bitcoin without reliable internet access[2] (not just Sudan) using various methods mentioned in that article.

So it seems that bitcoin is not totally useless for a region that has limited or no internet access, as long as it's operating elsewhere.

[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/03/15/how-a...

There are people all over the world using bitcoin.

Speaking of Sudan, woman are also using their body. What do you think is more popular, bitcoin or prostitution?

How many Sudanese do you know that are using bitcoin right now instead of money on their pocket? Yah, the article is about sending money to their families (since traditional wire transfers are not working -I wonder why?), not that people can actually cash it in.

Oh and lets not even talk on the fluff promotion piece of a L2 startup with gasp 3000 users across 7 nations - none of which are Sudan. Nigeria alone has 218 MILLION people. Are you kidding me?

cdchn 790 days ago

I think the US government/military is stronger than the Internet. Shit the Internet isn't even that strong.

In a real "collapse of the US government STHF situation" you're going to want to invest in beans and bullets, not crypto.

I guess my point is our world is so intertwined with the internet that if it permanently goes away we're pretty much in a 'the next war will be fought with sticks and stones' situation anyway, so what does it matter how well the military can defend those bonds and fiat.

Re:SHTF for sure, which is why it's not really worth considering, unless you're so sure it's going to happen and you're already accumulating those beans and bullets (also nothing is stopping you from doing that while also buying other things in case it doesn't happen, or takes a lot longer to happen than you predict).

Your specific country not having internet is basically a configuration issue; you can achieve that with a great degree of accuracy without cutting a single cable and without disrupting service to anyone else. There are multiple examples of this in the past 15 years,ranging from active monitoring like China does to pontual disruptions like many goverments adopted during the arab spring.

I'm aware of governments (or other situations) leading to a temporary shut down of their internet, that's why I said permanently.

If it's temporary or limited to a country, then bitcoin doesn't really suffer much from that either. The blockchain will continue elsewhere and can be synched back up for your region later, or if it's everywhere, then it will just stay in a frozen state until the internet is back.

So you can go to a country where there's still internet (assuming you can, you might not be able to), or wait until the internet is back up.

Hopefully you have other assets or goods to get you by in the meantime. Bitcoin is too volatile for it to make sense putting all of your wealth into it anyway.

Lets assume a state-sponsored threat model, with AS blackholing. It may happen the node you connect to sparsingly to sync your ledger is a malicious one, and does not represent the main ledger.

Lets assume you are in a country at war, with poor conectivity and you receive money via blockchain; Poor conectivity means the local places where you can spend your virtual money aren't synced, possibly for weeks. What good is for you money you can't access?

There are far better ways of carring value in warzones. Crypto currency is the most useless one - specially because you can't easily bribe anyone with it.

cdchn 790 days ago

Imagine having to awkwardly sit there with the person you're trying to bribe while you wait for your transaction to synchronize. This is where someone says something about L2 or whatever, usually.

cdchn 790 days ago

I suppose for the Internet to _permanently_ go away that would mean frying every device with a TCP/IP stack and network hardware. I think every nation-state could shut down their own Internet indefinitely and the maybe top 5 most offensive-cyber capable countries could shutdown the global Internet for as long as they desired.

kube-system 790 days ago

Yeah, 401ks and CDs are stores of value and not spending mechanisms, so it was a bad comparison to begin with. But physical paper cash, backed by an organization with many nukes and the means to use them, is probably the best thing to hold during war. Besides useful commodities.

You can buy and hold bitcoin and eventually cash it out just as you can a 401k or a CD. Now that there are bitcoin ETFs many people and organizations are treating bitcoin as if it's a store of value (whether that's wise or not is arguable, but that doesn't stop people from seeing it as such).

But if there's no internet, there's no way you can eventually cash it out.