Bitcoin Forum

Hypothetical::So the worst has happened, economic and societal collapse. My family escapes to a bitcoin-friendly (or unfriendly) jurisdiction. I do not have my hardware wallet. Before fleeing I smashed it to pieces, least it's confiscated. Seed phrase memorized and ready to go. Now what?

Well, you just have to keep remembering your Seed phrase until things settle and order is restored. Maybe write the Seed phrase down to also make your trusted person memorize it as well in case you get into trouble and stoned to death. Once the order in the society is restored I guess you can install a wallet and recover your funds to live happily ever after.

It's sort of easy to read but it's a lot harder actaully when there will be restructuring of government in your country. It will take years of hardship. I have thought of it for a long time and I'm sure I'm gonna forget about my seed phrase so I'd probably just print a paper and seal it tight and bury it somewhere.

You'll have two options. The first is to purchase another hardware wallet and restore your seeds using it. The second is to download one of the popular wallets out there and restore it. Most of the hardware wallets generate BIP39 seeds, but you'll still have to know the derivation path for your specific wallet. It shouldn't be a problem because that is public information.

1. Generate a new seed phrase (using the hardware wallet or an airgap system with any HD wallet)
2. Add an extension word (sometimes referred to as passphrase)
3. Send all your bitcoins to a new address from that new wallet
4. Tattoo the seed phrase from step 1 on your butt cheeks :)
5. Memorize the passphrase from step 2

Some optional steps:
A. Create a new wallet from the seed phrase in step 1 without using the passphrase in step 2
B. Send some small amount to that wallet for plausible deniability

Now, that means you have successfully demonstrated how Bitcoin cannot be confiscated. That's a good way of illustrating how Bitcoin is indeed about complete ownership. You own your Bitcoin. In that way, your worth is kept safe and untouched despite a situation when the economy and society collapsed. The next steps that you will do are the ones detailed above my post.

But I will ask you, what exactly do you mean by societal collapse? Because if it is a situation when the entire society is reduced to rubles and people are going back to the primitive ways, then I'm afraid Bitcoin is also rendered worthless.

OK,but what if OP doesn't have money to purchase another hardware wallet or he goes to a country,where hardware wallets are not sold?


Bitcoin CAN be confiscated.This has been proven many times.Just ask the FBI or any Ministry of Internal Affairs in almost any country in the world.


OP,why do you have to smash your hardware wallet?Can't you just take your wallet with yourself?
What do you mean by "economic and societal collapse"?A war situation?A natural disaster?
In case of economic collapse there are two case scenarios:
1.You get flat broke and unemplyoed,which means that you have sell your BTC,in order to survive.
2.Facing hyperinflation,which also means that you have to sell your BTC,in order to have food on the table.
Both case scenarios have nothing to do with you smashing your hardware wallet and memorizing a seed phrase.

If you used a hardware wallet to store your Bitcoins, it would be far more advisable for you to just restore it to another hardware wallet to maintain the security. If not, then I believe I've already stated that you don't necessarily need a hardware wallet.

All of the answers listed above rely on the assumption that the economic and societal collapse does not fundamentally affect the availability of internet. If internet goes down then all your ownership of Bitcoin will not be much use to you

It won’t be long until we see a scene in some movie of someone being tortured for their seed phrase. Those phrases would be the new prayers, people would have to repeat it to them self’s every day and it would actually be the safest way to store money.

You won't have any use for that in a collapse, either the electricity grid is rendered useless or there's no one to restore the Internet, also worth remembering that currency won't be useful as it's back to resources as the most valuable and barter system is the one in place.

You would be able to get your hands on a electronic device if there was a societal collapse. If we are talking about a natural disaster which causes a societal collapse like a solar flare which wipes out most of the electronic devices on earth there will still be laptops and computers which function because they would have had protection against that in a faraday cage. Then eventually society would start building electronic devices again. You do not need a hardware wallet you just need a computer and because of how the internet works even if the country you live in bans Bitcoin you can still download that wallet software and take your money out. I am certain that a country cannot ban a currency over night and instead have to allow a grace period for their citizens to take their money out of Bitcoin and back into fiat.

Yep, this is the most accurate response thus far as bitcoin will have zero post-apocalyptic value. Not that it was ever meant for that, obviously. But the fact is when the internet goes out, you effectively have no bitcoin, until it comes back on again. Bitcoin's reliance on a functioning internet and power grid renders it significantly more fragile than traditional forms of currency, and relies on a world where these things exist in perpetuity.

This is the same for all currencies paper money will not be worth anything in a true apocalypse instead people will be trading for goods like food and water but when the internet does come back online then Bitcoin has to be the number 1 choice for a currency right? I cannot see people going back to fiat when they see how easy it is to fail. Bitcoin can survive a apocalypse and I think is the most logical solution to a currency after society has recovered.

This was maybe true when comparing to fiat currencies 60+ years ago, when people were paid in physical cash, kept large amounts of cash at home, paid for everything in cash, wrote checks by hand for larger purchases, banked in person at a branch using paper records, and so on. Now, if the internet and power grid goes out, then fiat will be just as useless as bitcoin. Credit cards won't work. Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, etc., all down. No one can withdraw from an ATM. All online banking and telephone banking offline. Almost all merchants can't ring up your goods, accept payments, or even open the cash register.

That's without touching on the fact that in a scenario of global loss of internet and electricity for any significant length of time, no one will want money. Food, water, fuel, weapons, and medicine will quickly start being traded for each other.

I wonder what @OP means about the collapse, it's the collapse only on your country or whole country (apocalypse)?

How you can speculate that? if whole economic and societal are collapse which no one had access of internet, how can Bitcoin can still be number 1 currency if no one traded it? It will be worthless too but not 0 value like fiat, gold will be valuable.

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If it's only collapse on your country, then there's no need to panic. It's only a matter to keep your private key safely and import it on a new wallet.

I am thinking that fiat has been outdated for a long time and day by day we continue to convert cash into online virtual currencies. Everyone pays by card instead of cash atm and I think after a societal collapse people will be more suspicious of the government and will look for a better solution than to have a government owned currency. That is why I think the Blockchain and Bitcoin would be the solution because it cannot be controlled. I think the demand once internet has been reestablished will mean Bitcoin will be the choice of the people. Why will gold be valuable any more than Bitcoin? The internet will be a high priority because it is the best communication channel and after a societal collapse on a global level you will want to see how others are doing. The internet is what we are familiar with and we rely on it. If humans survive a societal collapse they will reestablish the internet quickly and I think Bitcoin is the only solution to a currency that will be worth using.

If we talking based on this current situation many people will still trust both of Government and Bank, since Bitcoin is still new for them and some country banned it or can't be used to buy food on their countries. Fiat was the only one legal tender except El Salvador, without fiat they can't buy food, water, or any other stuffs for daily live.

Gold will be more valuable than Bitcoin because all people know Gold has a value, but not all people know Bitcoin has a value. Gold has been discovered  and traded long time ago, it can be used when there's no internet access.

IMO your scenario work on full recovered collapse, while what I talking about when the situation were still collapse to recovered stage.

In the scenario of the complete collapse of society, gold will have very little value. Collapse of supply chains means no fresh food and dry/canned food will rapidly disappear from every store. How many people do you think could hunt or grow their own food? Very few. If 90% of the world are starving to death and someone offers you a gold bar for your last remaining cans of food, are you going to say yes? So you can die happily knowing you own some gold? The same is true for fiat, bitcoin, etc.

If society collapses, the most valuable things will be things that keep you alive, fed, clothed, and safe. Every form of money or store of value will be worthless.

If society collapses then the government will be the one to point the finger at even if it is a natural disaster which causes the collapse. People will look for someone to blame and the government will lose trust. Governments have proven in lesser events like the BLM riots last year that they will take extreme actions when it is not warranted what happens when there is a global collapse what extremes will they go to then? I am confident that if there was a societal collapse the government that we know today would change and hopefully we would see a non authority way of proceeding with our lives. During the collapse the only thing that will be worth anything is every day items that better your life like food, water, clothes but after we have recovered and we start to rebuild fiat cash money makes no sense to bring back. Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency will be the way forward.

There is no instruction manual for event like this, but I would never count on my brain and memory to remember 12 or 24 seed words,
I could always mix the order or make some other mistake, and if society collapses that would probably be a global event and not just local.
Having backup phrase hidden in multiple safe locations is much better option, and you can import it in any other hardware or software wallet that uses same seed phrase standard.
Problem is that economic and society collapse would affect internet, communication, electricity, food and everything else, so your best bet is to wait for all systems to be restored.

It is hard because the more places that you store your private seed the more chances of it being discovered by some one else. I recommend 2 highly secure places to store your seed because any more will not increase the security of it any more than storing it in 2 separate places but it will reduce the chance of someone discovering it and taking your Bitcoin. Economic collapse would not be as bad as a societal collapse. A economical collapse might be good for the adoption of Bitcoin because people would lose faith in the current money system. We have had recessions which people look for alternatives and I think that is one of the reasons that Bitcoin gained traction in the early days after the bank bail outs.

You are talking of the worst that can happen. In that scenario, a piece of half-rotten potato has more value than Bitcoin. In a worst societal collapse, the only thing that matters is existence. We will all be returning to the basic. Food, shelter, and clothing. Forget about Bitcoin. Forget about money. They won't keep you alive.

I am not sure what you are getting at, though, or what you are trying to point out.

You're hypothetical isn't even realistic, a bitcoin friendly zone won't exist because the first few years in a collapse is the worst year because it's the panic times and a societal collapse means infrastructure are untended and destroyed so it's unlikely a bitcoin friendly zone will exist.

Now first try to get the basics,in this new hypothetical country/zone that you evacuated you try to find food and shelter first.You wait patiently that the society starts building up again and only then restore your seed to a compatible wallet that will support the seed of your hardware wallet,mostly nowadays are BIP39 so any of them would do.Note that here hypothetically I am hoping for a rebuild first and that not all the world has collapsed but most of it.

In a different sense. Bitcoin can be confiscated not because the Bitcoin protocol itself has something which could be considered a weakness such that it could be exploited by the FBI or any ministry of internal affairs in almost any country, but because some Bitcoin owners are leaving a lot of traces behind. It is not due to Bitcoin that some coins are successfully confiscated. It is about those persons who made Bitcoin transactions. I stand with my claim that Bitcoin can't be confiscated.

Wow thanks for all of your replies, interesting discussion. The hypothetical is just an exercise attempting to educate myself as to what the hell to do with the seed words when in a jam. I am new to the space. So maybe we don't go as far as describing it as a total societal collapse. But it could be close, for example "society" can be a local situation.... let's imagine we are in Sydney right now, Marshall law, troops enforcing lockdowns, camps for the unvaxxed, etc. This IS happening, and I want OUT for example. Looks like I would need to secure a new BIP39 wallet wherever end up looking to be a free human being. OK fine but what if for whatever reason new hardware wallets are not available. And all I have is internet access...

You don't need a hardware wallet to generate a BIP39 seed phrase, any small application or any of the dozens of HD wallets can do that. You can even create one with flipping a coin 128 times and converting the stream of bits to a set of BIP39 words. Then with any basic cryptography library (like OpenSSL) you can generate an address with less than 50 lines of code; or the alternative is obviously to use a bitcoin wallet, just pointing out that it is a very trivial process.

Then you download and verify a reputable open source wallet such as Electrum and import your seed phrase or private keys in to it. It will then generate the same addresses you had on your hardware wallet and give you access to the same coins. This just isn't very secure since you are exposing your keys to an online environment.

If you can't acquire a new hardware wallet and you want to maintain a similar level of security, then you would import your seed phrase or private keys to a wallet such as Electrum on a permanently airgapped (i.e. no internet connection ever) computer. You can then take the addresses or xpub from that airgapped wallet and use them to create a watch only wallet on your main online computer.