Sending Bitcoin through radio waves?

[Abiky]

I've read somewhere that it was possible to send Bitcoin through radio waves. If I'm not mistaken, someone was able to send Bitcoin through HAM radio. It sounds crazy, but if it really works, then governments will have a hard time trying to restrict people's access to Bitcoin. This will enable true censorship-resistance as we speak.

That said, I'm curious to know how this is done. If you happen to know how, I'd appreciate if you could share it here for the benefit of all. Thank you.

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[mk4]

Check out this Tweet thread: https://twitter.com/nvk/status/1101518677910810624

Unfortunately I don't understand it enough to be able to explain it.

It sounds crazy, but if it really works, then governments will have a hard time trying to restrict people's access to Bitcoin.

Governments restricting access to Bitcoin through the internet would be pretty difficult enough; unless they shut down the entire internet.

[NeuroticFish]

I've read somewhere that it was possible to send Bitcoin through radio waves.

I think that you may be meaning something like https://satoshi.radio.br/wp/ which, from what I know, is not yet live/useful.
One problem may be the long-distance radio bands being controlled by the state/illegal to be used by individuals. But I'm no specialist.
There was somewhat related discussion last year here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5365021.0

[IadixDev]

I think that would be very possible, as at the basics the bitcoin protocol doesn't rely on internet protocol as ip or dns too much, nodes are not strongly identified, and the bitcoin protocol itself contain all the data to identify users with the public key.

Some scheme like elligator ( https://elligator.cr.yp.to/ ) could be used to make the signal very stealth if it doesn't collision with other used signal on the same radio band.

But it would probably needs lot of relaying nodes in the way to make it viable on long distance, but for let say cities or denely populated place could not be a problem, and some few nodes could bridge via internet or sattelite for long range communication. As bitcoin protocol is already resistant to middle man attacks and such i don't see why this shouldn't be possible.

If you need to mine that would probably be very limited though. But for things like SPV or non mining nodes, i think that could be very possible.

[Welsh]

At least, on a local level I'd think that the radio would be able to be controlled through jammers etc more than the internet would be. The thing is the entire world currently relies on the internet, and every day be start to rely on it more. Despite this fact, it wouldn't be easy to restrict peoples usage of the internet, its been tried, and you could probably say China has to some degree been successful in blocking certain types of content, though its so easily to bypass that for anyone who wants to, they could even without any technical knowledge.

Governments restricting access to Bitcoin through the internet would be pretty difficult enough; unless they shut down the entire internet.

Even then it would probably be pretty difficult to assure that the internet is completely shut down.

[ranochigo]

Satellite used by internet providers like starlink uses radiowaves to transmit information to their users. Starlink's bandwidth is sufficiently fast for Bitcoin nodes to operate so it would be perfectly feasible to run Bitcoin nodes using a constellation of satellite.

It might not be feasible for HAM radios to be used, unless you are talking about transmitting transaction data only (ie. SPV and block headers only). Depending on your setup, your bandwidth might be excessively low for anything like that to be feasible.

[titular]

If they can do it by satellite, they can most certainly do it by radio.

As long as you can broadcast the necessary information to complete a transaction, you can transact bitcoin in just about any way. Hell, if there was a server designed to listen for bitcoin transactions using morse code, and you could input all of the necessary information, you could theoretically transact this way.

[BlackHatCoiner]

As said correctly by ranochigo, it's impractical to use radio waves for anything beyond the block headers. So while you can send bitcoins this way, you can't have the necessary proof that the bitcoins have been sent, the transaction has been confirmed etc.

Governments restricting access to Bitcoin through the internet would be pretty difficult enough; unless they shut down the entire internet.

Nah, just censor everything. It's not an internet anymore, but you can provide them the basics, such as the government's website, Facebook, YouTube etc. You can restrict their freedom if you're a government, but it just pointless in the long-term. For how long will you violate their rights? People have provably shown they find a way. (e.g., Bitcoin)

[franky1]

satellite radio waves, cellphone radio waves only work because certain frequencies are only licenced to certain businesses/services.
this stops any interference.

though some agencies can illegally use equipment at frequencies they are not licenced to, to broadcast interference. but this is heavily stopped/sanctioned/punished if found, which makes the use of cellphone range of frequencies and satellite range of frequencies not be attacked by 'scramblers'

ham radios though are not regulated and anyone can just tune in a frequency and scramble/interfere with broadcasts by just pressing the microphone.

if you can get a licenced frequency dedicated to only one purpose where its transmitters are distributed under regulation/penalty of abuse. then you may have a chance.. but by that point. you might as well be using your cellphones dataplan, because then you become a telecommunication company to be 'protected' by the regulations of licences. thus no different than a cellphone company

[IadixDev]

satellite radio waves, cellphone radio waves only work because certain frequencies are only licenced to certain businesses/services.
this stops any interference.

though some agencies can illegally use equipment at frequencies they are not licenced to, to broadcast interference. but this is heavily stopped/sanctioned/punished if found, which makes the use of cellphone range of frequencies and satellite range of frequencies not be attacked by 'scramblers'

ham radios though are not regulated and anyone can just tune in a frequency and scramble/interfere with broadcasts by just pressing the microphone.

if you can get a licenced frequency dedicated to only one purpose where its transmitters are distributed under regulation/penalty of abuse. then you may have a chance.. but by that point. you might as well be using your cellphones dataplan, because then you become a telecommunication company to be 'protected' by the regulations of licences. thus no different than a cellphone company

Let say you encrypt the signal with something like eligator who is supposed to be statistically induistaguisable from White noise ?

You need another way to setup the config with the other node like band + pubkey though.

https://www.wftw.nl/

https://www.cryptomuseum.com/spy/fs5000/index.htm

This is for some inspiration

[franky1]

encrypting a message so no one else understands it is easy..

having that message then transmit over the airwaves on licence free frequencies but have no one else blasting signals across to disrupt the message is harder.

interference cant be stopped simply by encrypting the signal.

its like speaking another language is easy in a room of people that cant speak it. but try to speak to a friend, when everyone else in the room is speaking over you.
your friend wont hear you even if he knows what language you speak,, theres just too much noise

you need a dedicated private room(licenced frequency) to not have others speak over the top of you so that your friend can hear you

[IadixDev]

encrypting a message so no one else understands it is easy..

having that message then transmit over the airwaves on licence free frequencies but have no one else blasting signals across to disrupt the message is harder.

interference cant be stopped simply by encrypting the signal.

its like speaking another language is easy in a room of people that cant speak it. but try to speak to a friend, when everyone else in the room is speaking over you.
your friend wont hear you even if he knows what language you speak,, theres just too much noise

you need a dedicated private room(licenced frequency) to not have others speak over the top of you so that your friend can hear you

Yes you need un used band as well. Or maybe some guru technique similar to watermarking to hide the signal in another signal.

The idea of encrypting with eligator is not only that nobody can understands it, but it makes it extremely difficult to even know there is a signal at all ( undistinguishable from White noise ).

But i agree that would probably not being extremelt reliable on the long run.

If its to send a tx once in a while from an spv maybe.


But then if the idea is that millions people can send bitcoin transactions to each other with a censored internet and authoritarian government its probably nope ")



Or then you have pigeons

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers


Im sure if you really search you will find plenty of stuff like that :

Hiding Data in Plain Sight:
Undetectable Wireless Communications Through
Pseudo-Noise Asymmetric Shift Keying

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.02250


Abstract—Undetectable wireless transmissions are fundamen-
tal to avoid eavesdroppers or censorship by authoritarian gov-
ernments. To address this issue, wireless steganography “hides”
covert information inside primary information by slightly mod-
ifying the transmitted waveform such that primary information
will still be decodable, while covert information will be seen as
noise by agnostic receivers. Since the addition of covert informa-
tion inevitably decreases the SNR of the primary transmission,
a key challenge in wireless steganography is to mathematically
analyze and optimize the impact of the covert channel on the
primary channel as a function of different channel conditions.

[famososMuertos]

There is a saying that says "do not look for the five legs of the cat," it is possible to be realized but that certain "ideal" conditions would have to exist and in a combination of technologies it would be possible.

The only utility that I see doing it is only for academic¹ purposes of connection infrastructures(e.g.)
__
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1: Now an academic example, can you imagine transmitting 32 Gbits/s with radio waves?

For reference, 32 gigabits per second is fast enough to transmit more than 10 hour-and-a-half-long HD movies in one second and is 30 times faster than LTE wireless.

^{https://pressroom.usc.edu/scientists-twist-radio-beams-to-send-data/}

At the end of all this, the confirmation is not in the hands of the sender and receiver that are on the respective frequency and that is the great detail.

[IadixDev]

At the end of all this, the confirmation is not in the hands of the sender and receiver that are on the respective frequency and that is the great detail.

With spv wallet you could still fetching block headers from several nodes in signal range and check for your tx hash. You would still need a one to one signal for the merkkle branches.

Im not saying the latency would be great and everything but i dont see any reason why it couldnt work.

It how mo(dulators)dem(odulators) works after all

But like step 1 you broadcast your transactions to known stealth nodes in range ( how you know those nodes idk ). Step 2 those node broadcast a block header when there is a new block. Step 3 you ask for merkkle branches for your tx hash, if no answer repeat to one.

Bitcoin protocol already protects against data alteration in itself.

[pooya87]

It is very important to remember that when you are considering a method of communication, the hardware that method requires has to be easily available at home and majority of people have to already possess that hardware. For example when bitcoin is used over the internet, majority of people already own a PC or a smart phone to communicate over the internet, so it is the perfect way. But if radio waves, satelite, etc. were to be used then majority of people won't have the equipment already and setting it up would take a lot of effort for them, so it is not favorable.

[avikz]

I've read somewhere that it was possible to send Bitcoin through radio waves. If I'm not mistaken, someone was able to send Bitcoin through HAM radio. It sounds crazy, but if it really works, then governments will have a hard time trying to restrict people's access to Bitcoin. This will enable true censorship-resistance as we speak.

That said, I'm curious to know how this is done. If you happen to know how, I'd appreciate if you could share it here for the benefit of all. Thank you.

That's exactly why this method came up. In case government shuts down the internet, people will have another means to send bitcoin. Read it here,

https://news.bitcoin.com/no-internet-no-problem-how-to-send-bitcoin-by-amateur-radio/

This article is pretty detailed so take your time to read it. So if we suddenly wake up to a fascist regime where everything is controlled, radiowaves can get the job done!

[Kakmakr]

Well, in most countries radio frequencies are regulated and restricted within specific broadcast channels. So you might find that the governments might "block" certain frequencies ...if it is circumventing their authority to restrict it's use.

They might change the regulations to stipulate that specific frequencies might only be used for communication and not for data transfer or something like that, to criminalize the use of these technologies to be used for Bitcoin transfers.  

I can still send a verbal coded message with a private key to someone to give them access to coins that I transferred to a specific address. (previously funded address)

[qory]

I honestly was not aware of this one but if that's the case then I find it awesome, however I want to know more information about how this kind of thing works. So I would like to ask, would we be able to make transactions without internet connection? so it will be an offline transaction? It could be a big thing if it happen.

[tbct_mt2]

Even if it is possible, is it secured enough?

I don't know how private key will be protected if we include it in our signature when signing a transaction on radio waves. It sounds a very old technology for army forces centuries ago. Do we really need to do backwards technology after we already have the Internet and Blockchain technology?

Security is most importance so if by any mean, radio waves can be a secured channel broadcast Bitcoin transactions, I won't be against it.

[IadixDev]

Even if it is possible, is it secured enough?

I don't know how private key will be protected if we include it in our signature when signing a transaction on radio waves. It sounds a very old technology for army forces centuries ago. Do we really need to do backwards technology after we already have the Internet and Blockchain technology?

Security is most importance so if by any mean, radio waves can be a secured channel broadcast Bitcoin transactions, I won't be against it.

You don't need to send no private key over the network, only the transaction with signature that cannot be altered without making it unuseable. Bitcoin protocol doesn't require the channel to be secure to work.

Now clearly it doesn't have any advantage over modern internet or 5G / Wifi or whatever you have, other that it could be made more stealth and work without big internet infrastructure that can potentially be controlled, but if it get there it's probably going to wreck the economy much more than just bitcoin