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RE: What happens to Bitcoin if the internet is shut down?
From a digital currency perspective, yes. No internet, no transactions. Although I heard an Andreas Antonopoulos talk about transmitting Bitcoin using Morse Code if need be...
I wonder how Bitmain protects themselves (or more accurately 'position' themselves) to benefit from such an incident...
From a miners perspective, if the internet were to shut down, I would see it as an attack, were certain agencies might isolate the areas of outages...
As a hedge for you future, I do not see this as a problem, as its an investment in technology; in progression. If we cease to progress as a 'global' society.. Well, bitcoin would slide down the scale on Maslow's hierarchy of needs..
(Perhaps I'm not looking at your question as you intended..)
Morse Code! Wow, thats amazing. Antonopoulos is pretty great.
I wonder if Bitmain and others have any contingency given the severity of what would need to be happening in the world to shut down the internet (full global electricity loss or something). for analogy: Worry about whether or not you've left the TV on during a house fire.
Partial shut downs, outages, attacks.....A different scenario, definitely not as sci-fi. Suppose a country seals itself from the rest of the world entirely. My guess here would be a whole lot of forks. The areas that stayed connected to each other would continue to mine together independently of isolated areas. But given the resilience of Bitcoin, I would guess it could survive both inside and outside of the isolated areas (so long as the internal infrastructure is still there of course). So as many forks survive into the future as there are functioning isolated areas....If the separation was quick enough, I'd think people would easily agree on a proper chain and drop the others, or fork to an agreed earlier block.
I was looking for interesting conversation so thanks!
The bitcoin network could be used/maintained using CB/HAM radios - wouldn't be great, but it would work - it would be better than Morse Code, but good ol' Morse is always a fall back.