Bitcoin Forum

I am curious to those of you in the blockchain engineering side of Bitcoin what would happen to Bitcoin if a large scale war developed.

Unless there are features I am unaware of it seems that Bitcoin would not survive as certainly internet access across the globe would be regulated and controlled the moment war broke out resulting in forked blockchains everywhere.

And doesn't this mean that eventually Bitcoin will die because another World War most certainly will happen some day...

I am guessing it would kill bitcoin along with pretty well every transaction system out there including credit and debit cards.

I am also thinking that currency valuations would get totally shook up depending on who won and who lost.

Precious metals would probably do fine.

So long as transactions are broadcast on all forks, reconciliation can remain a reasonable outcome when the connectivity is reestablished.  It doesn't have to be done in real time, or even really at all if the disconnect is brief.  But if there is a long term segmentation, transactions can be synced over sneakernet or avian carrier and then on reconnect the longest chain can easily be accepted.  If there are double spends (the same coins spent in two different ways on two different forks), then there will be problems.  And since we can't see the other chain, we can't detect double spends until the periodic transaction/block sync.  But hey, it's war time and this is the only hope we have for international transactions.  Unless you are super careful, your ass can be tracked down and the situation can be handled.

Actually I am going to change my analysis here...bitcoin transactions would have less chance of being disrupted than cc and debit transactions because the transaction process is distributed just like the internet which was actually built to withstand things like this.

That's an awfully big assumption another World War is going to happen.

But if it did, Bitcoins would be the least of your worries.

A world war would not necessarily kill bitcoin.  As long as governments remain corrupt, bitcoin will flourish.

Not if you had your life savings in them... And yeah, a world war can happen, and would pretty certainly destroy Bitcoin... along with a lot of civilization as we know it, though.

Internet could be broken up into some isolated parts. The weak points are the submarine communications cables. Those are few in number (relatively). Other ways to cross seas and oceans, such as satellite, will quickly be confiscated by governments.
In case that after such an event two different block chains exists and connectivity is restored, I think the block chain which is the longest will be chosen. That is, if same protocol is used.
All transactions done in the other block chain will be worthless, and also the miners will lose all there earnings.
Double spending shouldn't be a problem, because then you would've access to both networks. And that isn't possible according to the assumptions.

How many wars are going on right now?

Oh, that many?

And Bitcoin is doing how well?

Wow.

Don't be stupid. It was a hypothetical question what would happen if internet would be split in multiple networks, with multiple block chains.
Note the words large scale war and World War.

It was a hypothetical question in the same sense as asking what if pigs could fly and developed psychic abilities to read peoples thoughts is a hypothetical question.

Except that nobody has seen a psychic flying pig, and there were already 2 world wars. Granted, nobody really cared about forking blockchain back then, but still...

So what you're saying is... we're overdue for the psychic flying pigs?

As another mentioned, if a world war did enough damage to take down the decentralized bitcoin network, you're probably going to be too busy holding your guts in to care.  Instead of worrying about dying, why not worry about preventing another world war from occurring at all?  Seems more productive.

+1

China tries to clamp down on the internet with the great firewall of China.  Even then though information about Tibet, democracy, etc. reaches China.   Yes, I do not doubt that the undersea cables etc would have issues, but to completely shut down the internet between the warring parties would be quite hard.  Between radio, satellite, cable, sneakers etc, it seems likely that some packets would still make it.  Think about this: suppose Switzerland is neutral, would both sides keep internet access to them?  All it would take would be some time each day/hour/week to resync the blockchain via a neutral country (or directly).  Perhaps North Korea or Cuba (maybe China) could pull off a completely cut-off from the world, but for many others it would be much more damaging to do so as compared to the benefit.

A problem would be that I think it unlikely that any splits would result in a near 50/50% break.  It would probably be something like a 80%/20% break of hashing power so that the smaller side would continually be on the shorter side of the chain.  Eventually they would in all likelihood stop mining (because it would be pointless since their blocks would never be included), and just broadcast transactions to the side with the larger hashing power.

Obviously this doesn't consider the actual damage a conflict could do to infrastructure - EMP, nuclear, biochem etc, just state actions that would attempt to prevent interaction via internet between the countries involved.

I think Satoshi selected a 10-minute block time (partly) to deal with situations where the network becomes fragmented (into several sub-networks connected to each other by slow and unreliable connections--what I imagine may happen if a world war were to break out).  I believe something like DOGE coin with its 60 second block period is going to form multiple forks very quickly.  Bitcoin, with its slower block time, is more robust to this sort of scenario.   

Quite

The effects of a world war would affect currencies in multiple ways.

In almost every way I can think of, distributed monetary systems would be superior to centralized monetary systems.

Just think of the devastation that a single nuke in any one of these cities would do to transaction processing for example:
United Kingdom London
United States New York City
Hong Kong Hong Kong
France Paris
Singapore Singapore
Japan Tokyo
China Shanghai
United States Chicago
United Arab Emirates Dubai
Australia Sydney
Italy Milan
China Beijing
Canada Toronto
Brazil São Paulo
Spain Madrid
India Mumbai
United States Los Angeles
Russia Moscow
Germany Frankfurt
Mexico Mexico City
Netherlands Amsterdam
Argentina Buenos Aires
Malaysia Kuala Lumpur
South Korea Seoul
Belgium Brussels
Indonesia Jakarta
United States San Francisco
United States Washington, D.C.

Any centralized transaction processing facilities i.e. banks in these cities would be destroyed however distributed transaction processing would fare much better since it would not rely on a single node to function.

The other thing worth considering is the value of the currency for any of the countries on that list if they chose the wrong ally and ended up on the losing side.  Their currency would most likely be devalued beyond repair.

This question really is about comparing Bitcoin as a value store to something like Gold not a fiat currency. It occurred to me that even were Bitcoin to survive and thrive for the next ten years, growing in infrastructure and adoption, that the ultra planner types would always want to store a substantial portion of their assets in Gold to protect against the worst of disasters. Bitcoin is not really designed to survive a worst case scenario. However, Gold is..... IMHO

I think the most valuable things in the scenario your talking about is bullets and fuel in order to procure water, food and shelter.  I don't think gold will be worth much however, if it was simply a world war 3 scenario then ya I think gold is a good idea.

Albert Einstein said: "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

If there is a World War III, neither bitcoin nor any other financial asset will matter.

There could be a world war in which nukes were not used, or if they were used, were used only tactically in some theatres.  Such a war would be unlikely to cause sufficient Internet damage to break bitcoin.  You would have to have EMPs on a large enough scale to break redundant backbones, some of which cross-connect far from major cities and military bases whcih are likely targets of strategic attacks, so it is even possible that bitcoin could survive strategic use.

Some scenarios in which large-scale strategic nuclear weapon use would be highly disruptive:

1) Russia vs. China

2) Russia vs. Europe

3) Russia vs. America

4) China vs. America

5) China vs. Europe

6) America vs. Europe

Of these the worst for bitcoin would be #4 since so much mining is in the US or China.  None seem likely.  More likely nuclear wars are:

1) China vs. Japan

2) Israel vs. Iran

3) Saudi Arabia vs. Iran

4) China vs. India

5) Pakistan vs. India

Of these the worst for bitcoin is #1 or #4, but I doubt it would cause a bad fork.

+1

Anyone who has been in the military doesn't believe in no-win scenarios....if everyone does it right then there should be a way to to win it even if wmd's are involved.

I think a lot of people get this kind of thing confused with events which cause a complete breakdown in society (the end of life as we know it).  These events are usually apocalyptic in nature and can be caused by nukes however don't have to be and can actually happen in a variety of ways.

Assuming that the world doesn't experience an apocalyptic event...I think there are outcomes where WW3 could happen with Bitcoin remaining largely intact.

Satellites will be even sooner turned to just garbage by a bucket of small nails thrown in the space at the required orbit (and each satellite gone to pieces yet more aggravating the situation). I think both Russian and American military sputniks can do this (blow out forming a cloud of lethal particles) in case such a need arises...

No, the price would sky rocket cause no body want to keep USD.

I think the Bitcoin itself may break into  different  forks  if  a World war would happen.
This is  because the internet  would  be broken into isolated networks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
Learned that watching http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816398/

Gold would be safe in value, but not very safe in storage.

The question should be, if something like this happens will you survive to use bitcoins??

Re-merging a forked chain is certainly not impossible.  If the damage were great enough to justify the cost of repair, it would be repaired.

No, the winner takes it all, lol

+1

History shows that whichever side won the war would probably have the "correct" block chain.

Nearly choked on my drink. Keep up the good work. :) I'm still wondering whether I should respond to this thread but I have a sneaking suspicion bitcoin will be all right after another war or two. Ever had one of those moments that someone asks a question and the answer is too obvious so you draw a puppy blank rather than go into excruciating detail to back up your point?


I'm holding in tears. :)

Every fracking day.
All the freaking time.

I don't quite understand this. Say, bitcoin has global adoption, then something happens and a region becomes isolated.

Say, BadCountry shuts off all routing at the borders and manages to get a good handle on all levels of comms, so that it is genuinely isolated.  (Or maybe the world takes issues with BadCountry, and puts all their IP space into a non-routing black hole). Either way, there is network inside the country, but not between the country and the rest of the globe.

In that situation, all new BTC transactions will be with other people in that country and people outside of that country will not get anything to process related to the transactions that happen inside of the borders of BadCountry. The reverse is also true. Residents of BadCountry won't have any information about external transactions.

So, it seems like merging shouldn't be that hard to do? If communications is ever reconnected, wouldn't it just be a matter of the two forms of information being caught up into one single chain?

Having two co-existing blockchain would be a disaster. That means that each balance could be spent twice (once on each blockchain) This renders a "merge" most likely impossible. The value of each BTC would be halved since it could be spent two times (on both sides of the frontline actually)

Assuming you could work around a blocus, an idea would be to increase difficulty to achive a the block generation of 24h instead of 10m and try to gather all the possible transaction on both sides of the frontline to avoid double spend. But 24h block generation might slow down the network to 1 conf every three days in unlucky scenarios...

How could you do that if the two environments are isolated?  To spend a coin, you need to have the private key. The private key will exist in one environment or the other, but not both. Even if it existed in both, wouldn't the biggest chain win and the smaller chain be thrown out?

Wars can be actually pretty good for business. If we were to talk about a zombie apocalypse, that's different story altogether.

Looks like you could do with a KitKat. ;)

distributed protocols like TCP/IP , OSI, etc actually was designed to survive to a possible next WW, without a single central point of failure ...

No design can survive cutting the wire. I think you would need a distributed, decentralized satellite based internet, with so many satellites it would be cost prohibitive to attack even a fraction of the network, then maybe...

I think what he was trying to get at here is that bank transactions are relatively centralized leaving them vulnerable to attacks while with Bitcoin, the transactions are distributed making them less vulnerable.

Then there is the question of "the books".  Banks would have a record keeping system for all their transactions which again would be relatively centralized while with Bitcoin, anyone with a wallet has a copy of "the books" (Usually called the block-chain).  To destroy the blockchain, every single computer containing an up to date copy of the blockchain would need to be destroyed.

As I explained before, the whole satellite system can be destroyed pretty fast in a matter of hours (if not minutes). A blown satellite at an orbit makes this orbit effectively unusable. Garbage in the near Earth space has already become a problem...

World war would instantly destroy everything....

who cares about bitcoin when we would have nuclear 100 year long winter....

The blockchain would not be split. New blocks will be smuggled across the frontline, hidden in the truth deception pills.

Gold and other shiny metals would remain and retain their value (well, to a degree while there is some form of commerce out there)... 8)

Couldn't an isolated country just turn its fork into a new coin? Isolacoin. Then when the fighting stops and global networking is restored people can trade back and forth like with any other coin. It would still be crypto, just a national one coexisting alongside the global one.

I am not a blockchain expert, but what you are suggesting is that each country could have its own registry of bitcoins. So couldn't I then spend 10 bitcoins in Isolacoin country #1, then cross the border and spend the same bitcoins in Isolacoin country #2?

Depends, can you buy $1000 worth of stuff with bitcoin and then doublespend it in litecoin? Separate coins, separate networks.

A valid Litecoin address is not the same as a valid bitcoin address. So if you want to create a separate coin I think minimally you would have to create a new type of address for your Isolacoin Bitcoin fork.

Supposedly one of the early coins was a bitcoin fork. Don't know the code in detail but I imagine Satoshi took these scenarios into account.

Also worth noting for the discussion in general, a world war does not have to include widespread use of nukes, or any at all. It's not really productive for anyone to toss them around.

Sometimes people go crazy and do not care about "productivity" or being "productive". So it is hardly possible to unleash a hot world war without taking to nukes... 8)

If you destory power supply lines, infrastructure that will support BTC trade and everything else, then Yes it will die. During war you dont trade with virtual currency you trade with gold, services and good that you can use to prolong your life and life of your family.

one will, it might be tomorrow, it might be in a thousand years, but 'world wars' have been around for thousands of years.

Weapons of mass destruction have not been. An important factor not to be written off... 8)

i think personally, that price would skyrocket of bitcoin, easiest and safest value store ever

No more World Wars.
We have had enough.

Next WW will either annihilate mankind, or send us back to the stone age while apes and cyborgs will rule the world using bitcoins for payment.

Right now bigger problem is if there going to be another cold war. Everyone know what would be the output of open war and everyone prefer to avoid it.

The entire internet will never go down. The main threat is segmentation of the internet and thus the block chain into competing chains.

The solution is to HAM or shortwave radio the data between segments, and the miners slow down the block period as necessary to accommodate the slower relaying time.

The coin needs a better (more efficient) design than Bitcoin on the way miners aggregate and relay data.

This can probably all be solved once we get serious development back into a coin. Bitcoin development has become rigor mortis.

Although, broadcast (as e.g. radio) is a marvelously efficient way to distribute the data.  Satellite seems like a no-brainer.

Good idea.

I also thought of another I think better solution so that block periods don't need to slowdown to the least common denominator of relaying delays. We provide a protocol for coins to be spent from a chain to another chain, i.e. the coin retires in the source chain and is born in the destination.

So then multiple chains can spawn and operate in different segments of the internet as necessary in a decentralized free market.

There are some caveats and details which I thought about but won't enumerate at the moment.

If bitcoin wants to survive world war, the infrastructure has to be in place now. World war today would certainly destroy bitcoin, a decentralized blockchain will never respond quick enough in chaotic world crisis. Because we can sit here and discuss ways that it could survive is far from it actually doing  so.

I agree that bitcoin dev seems stuck in mud, could be our undoing on many levels.

I am starting to think conspiracy when it comes to bitcoin languishing, something doesn't seem right.

"War is to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th; the pillar that supports the global economy."

- Colonel Roy Campbell, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Yes it will destroy the BTC.

A full world war, if it cascaded into a global nuclear exchange would be bad for the network.

EMP weapons detonated high in the atmosphere could certainly stifle Bitcoins growth phase.

But kill it with 100% certainty? I'm not sure, provided the blockchain survived somewhere, preferably in multiple places, then bitcoin survives with a possibility of restarting the blockchain after the idiots stop fighting.

I suppose before EMP problems blockchain forks might be forced by national firewalls, they would certainly kill the "oneness" of Bitcoin if they did fork and continue to run.

There could be no one to restart the blockchain after the fighting is over... 8)

bitcoin would still be alive because people would still want to buy pot on the darkweb

Depends on the effect a world war would have on the internet, if it can still run properly I believe bitcoin prices would skyrocket. People will be exchanging firearms and what not with bitcoin, in times of desperation and crisis people make the most money.

Lol, now we don't have anything like a world war but bitcoin is falling head to the ground... ;D

Haha, Maybe the thread should be "Does Bitcoin need World War to survive?" Maybe the answer is yes, but only a small one please.

Another World War would destroy everything. Well, maybe not roaches, I heard they might be able to survive a nuclear winter.

And take over the world (get ready)... :D

Your paper wallets will be fine  :P

Well, they shouldn't actually be made of paper or anything combustible. Do you know that roaches eat paper? ;D

The real question is....will humans survive a 3rd world war? It only takes 1 group to launch a nuke to spark a chain of nuke launches and the end of the world as we know it.

Yeah cause im sure the US will activate the kill switch,  then I dont see how we can do any bitcoin transaction after that happens.  I think is time to make new kind of interenet one where is controlled by the people PWW.bitcoin.com  Peoples Wide Web.  !!!

Im sure bitcoin will survive

You're assuming that the internet would be "regulated and controlled". If bitcoin were to die, it would not be from war, it would be from regulation. And even then, bitcoin might still flourish in places that lack control (like on the dark web).