In an era when countries are happy to censor or collapse entire networks, it is nice to know that Bitcoin can work without the Internet. After all, online censorship is not a dystopia, but a force that many democratic governments around the world use. Fortunately, there are solutions that allow people to send and receive bitcoins even in the worst case scenario. For advanced technology, cryptocurrency, it turns out, is very simple from a technical point of view.
Sending Bitcoin via Radio: Say No to Online Censorship
Imagine that you wake up one day and find out that there is no Internet. Not because you forgot to pay or the router came up, no: this is a government decision. You do not know when the Internet will return, and meanwhile life begins to change. Contacts with relatives and relatives abroad cease; Payment by card does not work. Since society nowadays is not taking cash, and ATMs store a limited amount of paper money, it is likely that you will have to enter the ring of underground fighting for food.
Since Bitcoin itself is a form of digital cash, preliminary planning will be needed to complete a transaction, but in theory it can work even when traditional options are excluded from the equation.
Although most of us, I hope, will never have to deal with the grim world of the Internet on coupons, the wise men will remind you that bad planning is planning failure. Understanding how to make cryptocurrency transactions in a chaotic world is a kind of knowledge that can come in handy one day and meanwhile will make you an interesting guest at a dinner party.
Depending on the political stability of your habitat, learning how to send Bitcoins without the Internet may just be an interesting agenda. But you never know when the knots will be tightened, and you will suddenly find yourself on a desert island surrounded by zombies, who will demand a ransom from you in BTC.
Radio bitcoins
The first information that bitcoins can be sent by air appeared in 2014. Hamradiocoin became one of the first altcoins for the amateur radio industry. Although this is definitely a very niche topic and it is not clear why she has her own currency, at present its capitalization is $ 794. It has not changed since May 2017, which eloquently testifies to the uselessness.
But the idea of marrying Marconi and Satoshi should have led to more useful experiments. The Finnish company Vertaisvaluutta.fi took a step in the right direction, proposing to create a half-duplex P2P CB / HAM radio cryptocurrency. Kryptoradio - also from Finland - has entered into an agreement with national broadcasting for piloting a cryptocurrency data transmission system that notifies about bitcoin transactions, blocks and cryptocurrency exchange data in the national DVB-T television network in real time. The project has not reached the commercial stage of implementation. That's what founder Joel Lehtonen said.
"The project attracted a large audience and there was a certain commercial interest, but nothing that would interest me because they destroyed the original idea of Kryptoradio - the autonomous distribution of the Bitcoin registry without an Internet connection."
In 2018, a new experiment was conducted. Ingredients: Brooklyn-based gothenn (goTenna), mobile, autonomous, consumer range network and Bitcoin wallet Samourai Wallet. The New Zealand developer transmitted a crypt over a distance of 12.6 kilometers, completely offline, using only an unplugged Android phone and four portable antennas. Most of the time, it took preparation, including setting up the relay stations.
And this year, Coinkite founder Rodolfo Novak managed to transfer BTC 600 kilometers from Toronto, Canada, co-founder of Openbazaar, Sam Patterson, in Michigan, USA. And at that moment the first international Bitcoin broadcast took place.
Special thanks to Sabo Novak and Patterson for their experiment, which even the snowy weather could not stop.
How to send bitcoins using radio
As Novak and Patterson showed, you don't need a lot of equipment or a satellite in the barn to send bitcoins through the air. All you need is an antenna at 7 MHz and 40 m and the JS8call application.
Although the installation seems simple enough (amateur radio is easy), in practice you are unlikely to want to figure it out, unless the situation threatens your life, for example.
In truth, there are many restrictions regarding the transmission of bitcoins on the radio.
First, legality. In order to remain the right side of the law, in some countries it is required to obtain a license for amateur radio activities, and even then you will not be able to send encrypted messages or use radio waves for commercial purposes.
Since the legal restrictions can be called the mother of all inventions, Nowak and Patterson bypassed them by transferring their experimental non-commercial data about encrypting the wallet through a public cipher.
Therefore, if you want a backup plan in case something falls on the fan, it is better to do everything until the Internet is cut off. We need people with hands growing from the right places. However, if you firmly set out to popularize an alternative way to transfer the cue ball, do not stop. You never know what will happen next.
Scalability is a problem
However, there is no problem yet. In the foreseeable future, the sending of bitcoins through the radio is not expected, unless there is an urgent need.
According to the Australian cryptotrader Boss Cole, “while Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are moving in the future, it is interesting to reflect on what will happen if we go into the past. To transfer Bitcoins without any Internet connection is possible and quite possible, although inconvenient. There are a number of projects working on this issue using their own satellites or infrastructure, but at the time of writing they are “unpopular” because there is no real need for them.
In the case of government censorship, the infrastructure will change quickly. If we run into serious problems, the infrastructure will appear. Because it is possible. If we go to the Middle Ages, the main method of transferring bitcoins will be the transfer of private keys between individuals. It would be simple, but inconvenient. ”
Thus, although it is theoretically possible to go to the sky and spread cryptocars around the world and even into space, in the foreseeable future this does not seem to be necessary.
Why radio wave transmission is useful
When we present the worst scenarios, the main character usually has nothing but a walkie-talkie and an old radio set against the background of the unfolding Hollywood doomsday.
But in an unstable situation, like in Zimbabwe and Venezuela, the year 2019 began with the Internet blackouts. In fact, network censorship has become an overly widespread experiment for many governments around the world.
India leads in the number of blackouts — 288 blackouts from 2012 to 2019, of which 134 cases were in 2018. The Middle East and Africa, too, have become accustomed to making citizens offline.
The UK has a perfectly legitimate Internet switch, which can be activated in the event of a serious threat, for example, a powerful cyber attack. The United States could have killed an e-mail at any time in the past 85 years, thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1934. Russia is considering a test disconnection of the country from the global Internet, so the threat is quite real.
Bitcoin for all occasions
It is possible that a small library of code was required to send NASA astronauts to the moon, but sending bitcoins does not require so many lines. All you need is a radio. But the most important thing is that a new technology can be just as convenient - or affordable - even if you use old ideas.
Sending bitcoins via radio is not exactly the same as sending a pigeon, but from a technical point of view, the comparison is appropriate.
Can you imagine a situation in which you will send bitcoins via radio? What other ways to transfer cryptocurrency without the Internet could be presented?
