Doomsday Preppers Are Starting to Switch from Gold to Bitcoin

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-20/can-bitcoin-survive-an-apocalypse

by rayuela • 9 years ago

20 59 9 years ago

bloomberg.com

SirLJ3• 9 years ago

The civilization will end as we know it, but the internet will remain intact :-)

jmnicolas2• 9 years ago

My thought exactly : if you really think civilization will end, you'd better be non electricity dependent.

In a true total collapse event, even gold won't feed you.

SirLJ3• 9 years ago

Absolutely, you'll need water, food, meds, guns and real friends to survive...

jackpot51• 9 years ago

When the shit really hits the fan, bullets and cigarettes are the only currencies.

sabujp• 9 years ago

don't forget alcohol and food

zaarn7• 9 years ago

Judging from post-WW2 germany, cigarettes were the most valuable thing on the market.

Probably because Alcohol and Food can be fairly easily self made (germany, tradition of beer brewing, you'll find someone, also lots of farmes, even today)

On the other hand, tabacco is from overseas and requires some difficult manufacturing. Same for bullets, mostly.

I think alcohol and food would stay cheap. The things that would replace money are things you absolutely need but are hard to produce without modern civilation. Ie, cigarettes, bullets, gasoline, rifles and toilet paper.

zappo2938• 9 years ago

They would be better off stocking up on Tide too.

doctorRetro• 9 years ago

"Her blueprint for survival also depends upon working internet"

I see a potential point of failure.

ringaroundthetx4• 9 years ago

Well it is false anyway.

Only a decentralized blockchain is needed for confidence in the data on it.

Ubiquitous internet is not needed, especially for the consumer.

Whether there are mere internet cafes, or data runners like the pony express updating nodes occasionally over long remote distances, we do have an asset which can be used offline.

On the consumer side, transactions can be signed offline, and broadcasted later.

Offline, consumers would be able to tell people their bitcoin address, would be able to check the balance of their bitcoin address, and would be able to create transactions with someone else.

For the consumer they could still store unlimited amounts and take up no space, it would still be infinitely divisible, and securable.

edit: hello downvotes, my argument isn't whether it would be more useful than some other bartered good, I would prefer if you had an actual rebuttal to the technology features I described, because downvotes make it seem incorrect to people less exposed to this technology and I'm confident that its not.

zaarn7• 9 years ago

On the consumer side, transactions can be signed offline, and broadcasted later.

I think it's fairly safe to say that a scenario with even sporadical internet is not quite a doomsday scenario yet. Or even having enough reliable power to afford running Bitcoin miners and other such luxurious things like running computers at all when survival is at stake.

In times of crisis people tend to barter and trade goods they need, not money.

heavenlyblue3• 9 years ago

How do I tell solve the double-spend without the internet?

crispyambulance3• 9 years ago

I think in an actual doomsday scenario, preppers would be better off with a pack of power bars and some dry socks than bitcoin.

JackC• 9 years ago

Fun thought experiment! A few reasons the "pony express blockchain" feels unworkable in practice:

- There's a vanishingly narrow band of "apocalypse" where the internet is gone, but everyone still has electricity and computers and the time and ability to agree on digital consensus protocols.

- Confirmation time on the blockchain is a high multiple of ping time. Bitcoin has 10 minute blocks based on an assumption that all miners will learn about messages within 1 minute, and it doesn't consider transactions confirmed until 6 blocks have passed.[1] If it takes a week for messages to travel through your pony express network, then transactions are final in 7106 = 420 days, which is a long time to hang out waiting for your transaction to clear in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

- Security assumptions. Bitcoin security depends on some assumptions like lack of prolonged network segmentation, or ability of each honest user to connect to at least one other honest user,[2] and it seems ... at least non-obvious that any given participant in a pony-express network can verify that the network's security assumptions have been met.

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Help:FAQ#Why_do_I_have_to_wait_10...

[2] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses

ehllo• 9 years ago

made my day ;)

misterbishop• 9 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzdw1MVJQME

krtkush• 9 years ago

Even the people preparing for doomsday cannot think outside of the bubble.

gfosco• 9 years ago

[citation required] Bitcoin will be pretty useless if SHTF.

Recently read an incredible story of someone who lived through absolute lawlessness in Bosnia... Even gold/cash lost value quickly, replaced by barter/trade. His main advice was to stock up on batteries, lighters, weapons, and ammo.

phkahler4• 9 years ago

Sorry to go off topic but since you mention Bosnia and it's near Christmas time I'd like to recommend reading this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_Eve/Sarajevo_12/24

The section on "Background and Writing" tells an amazing story.

To bring it back inline, maybe a prepper needs a cello too.

josephagoss• 9 years ago

I'm a massive bitcoin + crypto currency fan but even I think these assets are probably not the best for your typical doomsday scenarios.

zaarn7• 9 years ago

In a doomsday scenario, gold is worth nothing.

My grandmother used to tell me stories on how she stole cigarettes from american soldiers after WW2 to sell them for food later. Money, coins, gold, anything else, had literal zero useful value.

crispyambulance3• 9 years ago

I love it when Doomsday Preppers show what's in their "bug-out" bags: Guns, knives, more guns, beef jerky, bullets , cash.

The contents of the bug-out bag is not unlike one would expect in a first-person shooter video game. Perhaps that's where they get their ideas?

Now they're adding bitcoin to the mix. Practical.

ryandrake• 9 years ago

Honestly, if society actually collapses, the only things you need in your bag are guns and ammo. With enough of those, everything else becomes free.

ourmandave3• 9 years ago

Unless the "supply store" is shootin' back.

crispyambulance3• 9 years ago

Only in "The Walking Dead." In real life, a raging fool with a gun can only last so long.

What you really need if society collapses is adaptability, resourcefulness, really good negotiation skills and like-minded people that help each other out.

jacobush3• 9 years ago

And make room for each bullet by removing conscience?

ourmandave3• 9 years ago

Don't forget comfortable footwear. If The Walking Dead is any indicator of Doomsday, there's gonna be a lot of walking.

zaarn7• 9 years ago

And of course fully fueled and maintained cars that look like straight from an ad (maybe it is one?) to drive across the country with.

elcapitan• 9 years ago

When the "shit hits the fan", knowing + being friends with your neighbors is the currency you can count on.

TYPE_FASTER2• 9 years ago

There is plenty of cheap-ish land in VT/NH you could buy today and go off the grid. Water, heat by wood, grow your own food.

matt_wulfeck2• 9 years ago

But how does your scenario sit in my worldview that Bitcoin is the best thing ever and I’m going to be super rich some day?

derekp7• 9 years ago

But you need to be able to supply a private army to defend that land. Just because you own it doesn't keep others from raiding your farm fields in a doomsday scenario.

I guess one advantage of buying the property now (and vacationing there a few times a year) is if it is a relatively unknown area, and you can gain an advantage by familiarizing yourself with it.

TYPE_FASTER2• 9 years ago

Picking corn with one hand and holding a gun in the other is going to make for mighty slow harvesting...

hugja• 9 years ago

I've never understood the stock piling of gold. I feel like in doomsday life goods like guns, food, water, tools, etc. Would be of more value then gold or bitcoin. Maybe my view of doomsday life is harsher then others.

ourmandave3• 9 years ago

Maybe my view of doomsday life is harsher then others.

It is. I think it's doomsday when all the stores are closed on Christmas.

gonvaled• 9 years ago

Not all doomsday are equal: I see a crisis scenario where economies are in tailspin but infrastructure is mostly working - albeit getting more expensive (in ordinary currencies).

Having assets in a non-inflatable currency can be very good hedging against this kind of scenario.

nikolay• 9 years ago

Doomsday people are crazy to start with! Anyway, something that depends on a lot of electricity (in China!) to keep afloat, is not really doomsday-compatible!

phkahler4• 9 years ago

> Doomsday people are crazy to start with!

Really? I think they're just allocating more resources (both mental and material) to a possible future that most of us think is low probability. There are other ways to fall into the trap than crazy/paranoid ;-)

michaelbuckbee• 9 years ago

Very few of them seem to have sat down, looked at the risk profiles/probabilities of various scenarios and said "I should start prepping".

In most cases they seem like people who are terrified of a few overly specific (low probability) events to the detriment of their health, relationships and community.

What concerns me is both that there now seems to be media specifically designed to prey upon these people's fears and then turn around and sell them products to assuage those.

matt_wulfeck2• 9 years ago

Doesn’t processing a transaction cost the the same energy as a house for 7 days? This has got to be the most absurd switch I’ve ever heard of in a doomsday scenario.

jacobush3• 9 years ago

Not that I agree that bitcoin is a good prepper's choice, but to be fair, in a catastrophic event, the energy requirement would drop. If all the ASIC miners are going offline (due to bombings of power plants in China or whatever) then the hash rate would drop and the power requirements with it.

aryehof• 9 years ago

Better perhaps to invest in a large tradable supply of boxes of matches.

sebringj• 9 years ago

I've read about this pattern but of course, patterns change. (relating to a farmer investing in bitcoin) The pattern is when you have Joe Average investing in X that is the time to sell and buy the usually very stable but undervalued Y so when X takes a dive, in theory Y goes up like a rocket, then switch to Z or X or whatever is undervalued at that point that has potential. Are we not seeing that pattern now or is it X still just hitting mainstream, X being bitcoin?

Doomsday Preppers Are Starting to Switch from Gold to Bitcoin

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