Could Bitcoin use a parallel Internet?

[betswift]

~snip~
Secondly, do you think all those nations would unite at once? I don't think so. We are already having some group (The BRICS) trying to have their own monetary system away from the US dollar dominated economy, and you think they would gladly unite with the US?

You forget that great powers have something in common that never changes, and that is to keep as much control as possible over those they rule. If Bitcoin ever became a problem that stood in their way, I personally have no doubt that they would easily agree on anything.

BRICS is something completely different, incomparable to Bitcoin, because it is still a centralized project that can hardly succeed, given that most of the countries that support it are largely dependent on the markets of those countries that they want to oppose.

I don't see BTC becoming a problem for them, per se, more like another opportunity to get into something with profit in mind.

After all, people wouldn't use BTC more than fiat in the years to come: and almost all of the control would still remain for them to dictate.

[Synchronice]

There are exceptions, Scandinavian countries and maybe Switzerland are a good example when it comes to Europe, but most countries in the world are obsessed with controlling their citizens as much as possible. But the largest countries in the world, such as China, Russia, India and most of the EU countries, often go to extremes with their laws that undermine basic human rights and freedoms.

Some of them actually have a parallel internet in the sense that they filter/ban everything they consider unsuitable for their citizens, but even though these are populous countries, I haven't seen people rebel too much against such laws, as was the case recently in Nepal.

It is definitely the mentality of the people in question that determines their reactions to any issue, no matter how serious the issue may be.

Scandinavian countries are great places to live but I hate cold, I prefer to live in Spain and Netherlands. Portugal is nice too but also poor. Spain is one of the best place to live but their salaries are low.
I've never been to Australia but from what I've read online, Australia seems one of the best country to live in terms of high quality of life for an average citizen. This is pretty interesting country, very isolated but successful.

People do not rebel too much against such laws because they don't care and I understand their mentality. When you work hard every day and then go at home just to sleep to work the next day, you don't really care much about anything anymore. Then they are also full of hopelessness.

[Woodie]

Some years back I remember reading something to do with using Bitcoin without the need of the internet.. this was using basic USSD to access the coins and if this can be done, I don't think advancements as far as parallel internet will really be needed, but in a case of oppression or geofencing or internet blockage.. I guess the idea 💡 is welcome and the Devs mean we'll for the technology  .

[IngleseJoe]

 Absolutely Bitcoin could gain a lot from a parallel, decentralized network. It would cut dependence on traditional ISPs, boost censorship resistance, and make nodes more resilient to outages or government interference. Implementing it isn’t easy, but projects using off-chain routing, satellites, and peer-to-peer mesh networks are exploring this path.

[Hamza2424]

This is a topic I've thought about for many months, and with increasing restrictions on current Internet usage, it is becoming more relevant. The thought was triggered by a personal project by @JackG and I'd be interested to know how he got on with it. He was attempting to find a new block using a pencil and paper. Obviously this was just done to improve his understanding of Bitcoin, and not in the expectation of making any gains. I suspect that submitting a new block via the postal services may not be the most efficient way to claim a reward. However, it is my understanding that the essential mechanism of Bitcoin is not based on the Internet. The Internet is just used as a convenient method of communication between nodes and miners. The mining is done on local machines, and the blockchain is also stored on thousand of local machines. The Internet is just a fast and convenient way to communicate between nodes. I did look at LoRa to see if there were possibilities there in the even of an Internet outage, but it is too local and slow.. Satellite services may provide a better alternative. However if those were to be used in parallel with the existing Internet, then nodes would need to monitor two channels to keep the blockchain synchronised.
Do you guys think that this will be a viable option in the future, or will governments refuse to allow it to happen?

The satellites internet is not different, they don't work parallel as far as I understand the point you made here, if we use the satellite services to communicate that's still count as network, and the network means, every single country is connecting millions of devices in their countries to single point or multiple ISPs, to major data provider of every country then they connect them to different countries.

So the internet is the same, not parallel, so does the satellite services that we can use to syn our data, although you know more about all this, It is not a viable option though if we use a source that made us to wait a little longer, so you are saying if there are two networks, if I understood your point correctly, that we have to sync on all! Besides the way we use to sync the nodes must be viable too, and fast obviously as nobody wants slow things anymore haha.

[Byebyebtc]

This is a topic I've thought about for many months, and with increasing restrictions on current Internet usage, it is becoming more relevant. The thought was triggered by a personal project by @JackG and I'd be interested to know how he got on with it. He was attempting to find a new block using a pencil and paper. Obviously this was just done to improve his understanding of Bitcoin, and not in the expectation of making any gains. I suspect that submitting a new block via the postal services may not be the most efficient way to claim a reward. However, it is my understanding that the essential mechanism of Bitcoin is not based on the Internet. The Internet is just used as a convenient method of communication between nodes and miners. The mining is done on local machines, and the blockchain is also stored on thousand of local machines. The Internet is just a fast and convenient way to communicate between nodes. I did look at LoRa to see if there were possibilities there in the even of an Internet outage, but it is too local and slow.. Satellite services may provide a better alternative. However if those were to be used in parallel with the existing Internet, then nodes would need to monitor two channels to keep the blockchain synchronised.
Do you guys think that this will be a viable option in the future, or will governments refuse to allow it to happen?

Well you are right apart from the fact that it looks local
There are also factors like congestion, geographical distance and a lot more
But we have P2P internet instead of the creation of a brand new internet P2P could be made more efficient for deep Broadcasting of blocks in alot of ways
And even if a new internet has to be created it will be done by bigger countries like Japan Singapore etc

[tread93]

What I think could happen is other superpowers such as China and their alliances will create their own alternate Internet infrastructure away from the US and the west like they are already doing with different things such as EVs, Operating systems, global navigation satellite systems etc

This definitely becomes tricky for Bitcoin on which internet system to use and which one not to use, but it would actually become much better if it uses both. Perhaps, we shall figure it out when that time comes.

As for a global internet outage or restrictions. I don't see it happening and when it does, it means that I would maybe happen during the times of apocalypse and this implies all other systems such as the banking systems will also be out.

I don't think all Governments worldwide would Unite to fight against Bitcoin, I think it's too late for them now.

Even if the internet went out we could join HAM radio clubs and broadcast Bitcoin transactions over the radio station networks and many people do that today so I know its definitely possible if something crazy like that ever happened. Some countries have already deployed their own separate internet to bypass I think recently one country in Africa comes to mind seeking internet independence