Can we have a thread about what the hell to do right now?
🗣️ DISCUSSION 💬
First of all, I'm an idiot when it comes to anything financial. I know many of you aren't. What is the safest thing to do with the money (fiat) that we do have right now? Leave it in our local bank? Credit union? Keep it as cash in my sock drawer? Also, the money in my 401k? Switch it over to bonds or something else I don't fully understand? Any thoughts from someone who's been paying better attention to these things than I?
What if the power network goes down for appreciable lengths of time?
Bitcoin requires a functioning internet.
This is how I feel. I don't know much about finances but I do have common sense. My gut tells me to hunker down with a traditional approach. Learn skills that our ancestors knew just growing up. Anything that can help you survive off grid. I guess I feel if we go down we will either go completely down or our systems will be artificially supported and it won't impact us like we think. If we go completely down, I don't expect to have power or water. I don't expect to have restaurants, stores will have limited supplies. We may have no access to medical care or even transportation if we have a BMP or a catastrophic trucking failure. Think no gas at the gas stations. What happened last time? There just wasn't money in the system. My biggest fear is that both of us are on SSDI. I have squirreled away some cash and yes I know it may be worthless. We have many old school skills, we know how to fish, hunt, garden and forage. I know food preservation and textile arts like sewing, knitting and crochet. We have alternate ways of heating our home and getting water. We are too old to raise and care for animals but that's probably a better bet than a gold nugget or bit coin if there isn't anything to buy with those resources and you need food. Maybe I'm a fatalist but either it will be worse than Bitcoin and precious metals can help us with or better and we won't need to worry about it. I'm focusing on preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.
Money will be the last of your worries if power is out for any length of time. Bitcoin has been broadcast through ham radio and the blockchain is broadcast from satellite as we speak. Bitcoin is not the save your ass thing you need when things are desperate, however it is the currency by which ALL other things will be valued . That is inevitable.
I was with you until this point. The vast majority of the world are not educated in Bitcoin, yet the vast majority understand gold/silver.
A baseline commodity for valuing currency will likely revert to form - and after a banking collapse, who would trust digital anything?
Like I said, I have no idea to whether this will occur in our lifetimes or not, but it is inevitable that Bitcoin, being the world's first and only medium of exchange which cannot be gamed, owned or controlled by a permissioned select few, will become the central piller of what 'value' is, like the gold standard , it will be the bitcoin standard.
I see what you are saying, and I don't discount the possibility, I just don't think it's very probable, at least not for a very long time.
If power goes out for lengths of time nothing happens. what are you talking about?
Not sure if you're being deliberately obtuse, but how would you trade Bitcoins if there was no power?
If there was no power, trading Bitcoin through traditional online channels such as cryptocurrency exchanges or trading platforms would not be possible as they require electricity and internet connectivity. However, there are a few other ways to trade Bitcoin without power:
In-person trading: Bitcoin can be traded in-person through a process known as over-the-counter (OTC) trading. In an OTC trade, two parties meet in person and exchange Bitcoin for cash or other assets. This method requires no power or internet connection.
Paper wallets: Bitcoin can be stored offline in a "paper wallet," which is essentially a printout of your private key and public key. This method allows you to hold Bitcoin without an internet connection, and you can use the paper wallet to send or receive Bitcoin when power is restored.
Mobile hotspots: If you have a mobile hotspot or a satellite internet connection, you may be able to trade Bitcoin using a mobile device or laptop. This method requires some level of electricity, but it can be powered by a portable generator or other off-grid power source.
Overall, trading Bitcoin without power would be challenging, but it is not impossible. The best option would depend on your circumstances and the availability of resources in your apocalyptic scenario.
Thanks for the additional info. Isn't Bitcoin validity checked with the blockchain info though?
Off-line processing would be risky then wouldn't it? Not sure I fully grasp all the nuances to appreciate the extra detail.
He means if power is gone long term. As in months or longer. Which of course obviously means two things:
If the power is restored then you can access it again but is there a guarantee that the society afterwards will acknowledge it as usable? I don't know.
The obvious answer to all this is if you have faith that the power will hold then BTC could be useful. If you really believe that the world will actually not be capable of producing electricity for its citizens for a significant length of time then you should get out of ALL associations with it. Monetary and otherwise. Because there is an anecdote that goes "All it will take for society to collapse is three days without power" and it is for the most part accurate.
This does not mean a single city or even a full state without power. Because places have weathered outages longer than that. It means globally. If for some reason no one could access electricity for three days or longer, society would start to collapse into chaos.
Honestly...why would we not be able to get power anywhere in the world for weeks on end? I don't know. A widespread EMP caused by a solar storm would only affect the daytime side of the planet. That would be a catastrophic event that would require 4-10 years of rebuilding if it affected the USA. But there would be power in the world elsewhere. And there is no telling which part of the earth would be affected at that moment. The odds of this are obviously extremely small. EMPs caused by nuclear warheads are real. But honestly if there is an EMP caused by a nuclear attack then the lack of electricity is going to be lower on your list of priorities anyway. You'd be better off eating a bullet at that point because living past that will be worse than if you had been vaporized.
You have to cut your level of confidence off somewhere and work from that point outward.