Bitcoin Forum

Is it possible/an advantage to live off-grid with bitcoin?

What I mean by this is living on a rural property, perhaps running a full-node, completely independent from the existing fiat financial system. We want to remove our dependency of the banks and corrupt political establishment entirely.

Obviously, you would need electricity and a computer to run a node and connect to the network. Perhaps bitcoin is not well suited for rural lifestyle or off-grid?

It'll be very complicated, and you'll need a fair amount of crypto-currencies to make it work.

I know as a fact it's fairly easy to live in a city and pay/use things that accept crypto-currencies, you'll just need to limit yourself to some items.

If your talking about a little hut away from civilization, it's possible, but Bitcoin and crypto-currencies aren't really the issue here - getting essentials like food and water are the problem here, especially when you can't just use Bitcoin to order food (kinda ruins the point, right?)

Ehh...'grid' usually means the electrical grid, and even more so 'off grid' means anything but having enough connectivity to run a node.  So no, I don't think those two things are compatible.  

Don't pay attention to all those youtube videos of people claiming to be living off grid, constantly filming themselves and miraculously uploading videos and so forth.  That isn't in the spirit of living off grid, no matter what they claim.  Anyone not using electricity or who's trying to stay anonymous will most likely use only cash, which is still the most untraceable form of money.  Or barter.

Maybe you are correct about the clash between bitcoin nodes/electrical grid and living away from this type of influence. Time to drop everything and head for the hills!

You need antminer to mine Bitcoin. It's very difficult to mine Bitcoin thru computer these days. Also it needs constant supply of electricity. Because you live in a place where there's a lack of electricity. Mining will be difficult for you because it consumes electricity unless you have good source of decent electricity like solar panel or windmill turbines.

And lastly, it's hard to live with cryptocurrency. You still need cash as majority of merchants accept cash not cryptocurrency. You still need Liquidity for your Bitcoin in able to buy what you wanna buy.

i am not sure about it, somehow , i just think, that it seems hard to be realized.
the real problem , how about ur day life ? i mean u still need money right ? and also , i am sure , in the countryside it is hard to find ATM machines,and also other basic needs. its totally sick for me.
who say ?
as long u have everything need for run btc mining, it's absolutely fine.

Why do you need Bitcoin if you want to live off-the-grid? If it's just a store of value for you, then no problems, you can just threat it as if it was a gold bar - hide your seed/paper wallet in a safe and don't touch it. But if you want to use it instead of fiat whenever you want to make purchases, it can be a bit hard - there will be no people nearby who accept Bitcoin, so you'll have to sell it for fiat and withdraw that fiat - you'll still be bound to the fiat system. Plus, this selling would be a taxable event.

There a huge conflict for sure mate, usually most people who are very involved with Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies are huge tech nerds and love their online world.

It's pretty hard to be into Bitcoin and also be a rural person. Electricity, internet access, etc is all needed for that to function and that just doesn't work with what you want to do haha.

That will depend on the rural you're pertaining too, do you have food and water supply you can get for free since you'll need to convert your crypto if you're going to buy there since cities are not equip yet in stores accepting crypto what more in rural areas? About electricity as long as your solar panel will be enough for your mining or might cause shortage then you'll still need to depend on governments electricity and Internet that you'll be needing to pay thru fiat, but it may all depends on your country.

It's interesting but totally impracticable to do nowadays

You can have a big solar system, ok
You can mine BTC or altcoins ok
Buy food, medicine, supplies in general with BTC without converting to fiat or use a system with KYC it's almost impossible, you will have to do a lot to maintain this lifestyle

Actually, this is not impossible. You can live off-grid but there are many challenges one must be prepared for. You need your own infrastructure that can generate the power you need for the mining, you can for solar or wind or maybe hydro if there is a good source. On this big challenge along, you need huge capital. Then you make sure that you know good agriculture because you must be planting most of the things you need to eat as it would be hard to find providers near where you can be located. I am actually interested of this idea generally, even if am not interested with bitcoin mining but living off-grid sounds very romantic and cozy. I love to commune with nature, by the way, which can come handy with this proposition.

This is a good video of someone who is (or maybe was since this video got uploaded in 2017) mining cryptocurrency using the solar power he generated, maybe we can learn a thing or two: https://youtu.be/zeTb30uIRbo.

It depends on which country you are from. If you are from a developed country where a rural setting still gives you the fast internet, consistent supply of electricity, and so on, then I guess there is no problem with it. But if you happen to be in a particular country more or less like mine where a rural setting can be reduced to descriptions such as mountains and trees and rough roads where electricity is rationed for a few hours a day, with slow to no signal, and where internet is unknown, your plan is a mere dream.   

It is possible to live with bitcoin and crypto offgrid and on rural areas. But what seems impossible is when we live there withiut the government intervention. In that case, we will have a difficulty in creating trasaction since rural areas aren't that exposed to crypto, our currency will not be suitable for goods and services that we need to acuire. Still, we need to seek the help of fiats run by government.

it is not something you can do on your own. you need others to have adopted bitcoin as a currency too. for example in that "off grid" place where you run your full node, you still need electricity and a PC which means you have to pay the bills and buy the PC and unless they accept bitcoin as payment you can't really achieve what you are trying to do here.
otherwise as far as possibilities go, it is possible and in fact pretty easy thing to do.

The question is ambiguous, the requirements are unclear and I can't see clearly what you mean by this post. If what you mean is just living in a rural area with a full node given having electricity only and internet connection, without fiat on-hand, then it could be. You would farm your own supplies to live most likely, because living in a rural area where digital progress isn't enough for people to even transact with bitcoin, or even know bitcoin, would make it hard for you to trade for the goods you need to live. Fiat is still more reliable in these areas.

Very very difficult, unless you really lived in a country wherein bitcoin is readily accepted otherwise you still needed the old and traditional fiat system to live and survived.


Maybe is bitcoin will be used to transact or be the main system in the future, you have a chance to just stay in rural areas and live nicely with your bitcoin stash.

Maybe in Japan or some place like that where the majority of services already accept BTC, and even then, it would probably be complicated to pull it off. Maybe in another decade, things might look better then, i think.

Yes, it is possible to live and run a bitcoin full-node off the grid.
There are a lot of people who live off the grid these days, although it requires the solar system to generate electricity which relatively expensive to buy the solar panel and all the stuff to make it works.

Running bitcoin full-node and mining bitcoin is clearly different. Currently, there is a smartphone HTC exodus 1s (https://siliconcanals.com/news/htc-exodus-1s-runs-full-bitcoin-node-launched/) that can run bitcoin full-node, it is more convenient than run it on a computer, right. If you want to mine bitcoin, all you need is enough solar panel that could generate enough electricity to run ASICs.

it is possible to do, maybe for 1-2 people, but very difficult for large groups, especially if there are children or teenagers.
they will want to try all sins modern civilization has to offer and your commune will have hard time to resist temptation.
but for oldest people, who made its decision to live off grid deliberately - this is possible.
but I think they still need money to pay for gas, medicine, clothes and so on

No matter how much bitcoin you have, most rural places lacks internet connections. What I want to say, yes you have enough bitcoin to feed yourself but does your place have shops where you can use it to buy your necessities? Does the people there have knowledge about crypto? It's more hard to find shops that accept bitcoin in rural places, so no matter how much you can earn bitcoin, how about your needs to live? Can yout bitcoin feed you when there's no available merchants accepting it???

It is very difficult to live in rural areas and use only cryptocurrency to make any purchases and pay for services. It seems to me that you can’t do without the existing financial system. You will not find the full opportunity to pay for everything in cryptocurrency. It is still not so common for this. In any case, you will have to convert the cryptocurrency to fiat. Yes, I don’t see the point of doing this. Regular currency is not so bad as to completely abandon it. However, try. After some time, I would like to hear how such an experiment ends. In my opinion, then you will appreciate the importance of the common currency in our lives.

That could be possible, but there will need a lot of things to prepare before you can operate one place with bitcoin. Yes, you need electricity and a computer which will run the network. You need to make one place that will not use the sources from out there and only use your resources to live off-grid without interfering with the government.

I think that will be too complicated to think because that will need a lot of money to build that place for the first time. But so far, I cannot imagine what will we need to prepare to have that place.

In 5 years I think it will be quite possible, at least a lot of things indicate it.

Eh, it's not really feasible at this time IMO, even when ignoring the rural part it's very hard today to not use any form of fiat at all. There are still not that many places that accept crypto, so paying for basic needs will be hard. Also finding employers that can pay you in crypto is very hard (unless of course you have enough BTC and don't need to work any more  :P). So yeah, I doubt it's possible to live with only Bitcoin at this time, we can only hope that changes in the future  ;)

If you think bitcoin is money or something else who have a value then you need other people who have that thought as well. Bitcoin can't be use by yourself and it is not easy to give an understanding about it to new people even more you live on rural place.

Just use it and follow what government want, and I think not all crypto user have the same thoughts as you. Let government accept cryptocurrency first and if that happen you can live with the concept as you want. If you talk it now, maybe there are a lot of countries who can ban crypto again.

Yes let's say it's possible but I don't think I will last even a year like that, especially when you're used to living in urban. We cannot completely remove the government's  involvement since we're still under a certain government's ruling. You have to think of probable circumstances if you're going to push it. Cause in the end you will still need fiat.

Everything depends on where you live, for example, my family has a farm near the border with Colombia, which is undoubtedly an excellent place to live outside the system and is that Venezuelans living near the border do not accept Bolivars they accept pesos, dollars and even Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, so the Venezuelan authorities can't know how you're spending your money.

P.S., it's a rural place.

The "off-grid" and "with bitcoin" parts seem like separate, unrelated issues. In fact, living off-grid usually implies self-sustainability, which generally removes the need for money.


One could use solar or micro-hydro power generators to remain off the electricity grid. Long-range microwave links and mesh networking could theoretically even remove the need for conventional internet service. So assuming you have a PC, you're good to go.

But you're right, the ability to transact with bitcoin in that situation completely depends on adoption. Especially if you live out in the middle of nowhere, far from any cities. Very few people out in undeveloped areas are probably using Bitcoin.

You don't really need a full node (and it would over complicate things), but you would need to be able to connect online from time to time, to spend your money. If its only savings (income), then you can truly be off grid, which is what a cold wallet essentially is.

Obviously you need electricity, but that can be solved using renewable sources. Internet is more difficult, but wireless either ground or satellite based is possible. If you only want to monitor your savings, you could use that bitcoin satellite thing, that is simply sending the blockchain for anyone to see it. But any kind of spending needs a return path to the blockchain (internet).

Take a paper wallet put it in a Ziploc filled with rice, insert into PCV pipe filled with rice, seal and bury in secret location.

Now go have your off-grid adventure. Just don't forget where you buried your bits.

Off grid, you plan to make your own electricity? Solar? Creating electricity using solar panels is expensive, thats a big investment to start with. But if thats what you mean about off grid then you need a lot of money to start with your plan.

Living only with Bitcoins is possible. There are bloggers out there who posted their travels and experiences on how they were able to pull it. I would say it depends on where you live because there are still countries were Bitcoin is not yet mainstream and only a handful of merchants accepts it.

Its not too expensive if you stick to just panels, and do the old fashioned method for the night: Sleep. Contrary to popular belief, you don't need batteries, that's what makes it so expensive. You can also combine with wind, or hydro depending on place.

Thing with using bitcoins is probably not yourself but the other people you plan to trade with. If you come down the mountain to a town or village with internet, electricity, etc, you could simply use your wallet there as usual, or exchange for fiat the minimal amount needed.

that's possible. life without technology today can be done, financial systems without Bitcoin technology. even without the internet can be done. I think that's more peaceful. I personally live in the countryside, in fact the financial system in my village is still traditional with fiat money. and they don't understand bitcoin. all went very peacefully, safely and comfortably.

I don't think you really understand the concept of living "Off-grid". Living "Off-Grid" means that you basically are self-sustainable, without any technical or material distractions.

It's basically going into the woods with the basics, and then making your own house out of your hands, and then making food and hunting for animals and food every day. No technology is allowed to be involved in this situation.

For sure it can be done. Lets take as example the Dash masternode owners , do you think they work anymore ? I bet they are sitting home ( open crypto businesses I hope ) and they simply monitoring their nodes and same goes for Blocknet nodes owners as both of the investors did a smart investment of holding their masternodes even after the 2017 run. If you have bought lets say 20 nodes of Dash now you're nodes are making 8k$/month which is a super nice income especially in the long term run. In Blocknet it goes the same as 20 nodes will bring you around 1.4k$ at the current price which is insane during the fact that it was so cheap back in 2015. Smart investments can make your life more comfortable in order to focus for your progress.

You cannot run a node and be off-grid, one thing defeats the other. Unless your node is elsewhere and you go check it from time to time, which is the same thing i said about going to town to use your wallet, etc.

Also, don't think that the Dash model will be eternally feasible for an infinite number of investors. I wouldn't be surprised even masternode owners would have the luxury of "living only of their nodes" for long. Its fun while it grows, but once it reaches saturation... Hmm where have i seen that before? MLM? nah, must be my imagination.

I think its quite unrealizable. We cannot live in a no electricity area if we do cryptocurrency. We can still live in a rural area that has electricity and internet connection. Living in rural areas does not necessarily mean that we can be free of government and other distructors. It can be minimal but still local government are present.

If we can find new resources to create something that will produce electricity, we can live without the government because we have our power and it can light up our place. But that will be difficult as we know that the government doesn't want to see their people use something that they don't know. If you want to remove the dependency of the banks, then you will need approval from the government because the bank will be related to the government itself. I don't think that the government will agree with that because the bank is one of its components to make money.

But you can build your own electricity sources and a computer that runs a node and connect to the network. However, still, you need to pay the internet connection to the ISP provider unless you can have a new source to use the internet without help from the ISP provider.

I think you can almost live off the grid. Everything you need will be paid for with crypto. You can definitely produce electricity using solar so that is covered. What you say is exactly right. You still need the ISP and any other services or subscriptions. But it is as close to completely off the grid as possible. To be totally off in the pure sense of the word you would have to totally disconnect and not use the internet at all. You can still use the pc and electronics since it can be run off solar.
To totally go off-grid you could go Amish ^^

Btw why do you say that you need the approval of the government to remove dependency? What on earth are you talking about?

I really like the idea of living off-grid. The main problem with that is you'd need a wireless Internet and this isn't extremely reliable or extremely safe to use.

I live in a rural area in a house that's partially off-grid, but I have a fiber optic internet cable running all the way from the nearest road to my house via poles. I did that because it was almost impossible to have a steady LTE connection in here. One day my phone works well and the other day I need to go outside to make a call. This would be your main problem if you wanted to live like this.

maybe a statement like this is very difficult for those who live in rural areas to achieve cryptocurrency especially because most people who live there may be some of them do not know much about bitcoin and other cryptocurrency because those who live in residential areas are not the same as us who live in urban areas easily have what we want and it's easy to adopt cryptocurrency.

Yes, you can't use bitcoin off-the-grid because to conduct bitcoin transaction to need to connect to internet. Bitcoin is a digital currency after all and there is no way you can use bitcoin even if you have the full-node. In fact, the full-node requires internet connection to synchronize with the bitcoin network. To use bitcoin anywhere you are going to need internet connection, period!

It can be done I am sure and there must be people doing this in their RVS, Tiny Houses and renovated olf school buses. I know in America a lot of people have taken to the life on the road and are full time digital nomads and working online and earning their keep. I am sure many of them are in crypto related work and have Bitcoin as well, so they must know best how to do this. You should follow maybe on Youtube some of these digital nomads and maybe get in touch with them and ask them how they are managing to live off the grid and perhaps using Bitcoin to boot. If I were much younger I would love to live this life but where I am it is not possible and land is expensive here as well. I think I would move to somewhere like Asia if I were to do this.

Off-grid means without paying for utilities. You can buy a cheap LTE connection and have wireless Internet wherever you want.
It's possible to live like that as long as you pay for the Internet but he could have a house in the mountains with its own water and power.

The problem lies in profitability. Such off-grid system will be expensive and it will take years for it to pay for itself.