Transfer bitcoins without internet

[Mr. Magkaisa]

   -  First of all, it's good to know that you're doing something to bring bitcoin closer to the community place you're in, mate. Just like you said not all places can reach the internet.

Now as for sending bitcoins to other people without using the internet, I don't know if anyone has thought of such a way. As far as I know, at this time no one has ever transacted by sending bitcoin without the internet being used. In short, it's not possible right now, to be honest.

[1714758101]

1714758101

[Adbitco]

I have actually came across a post that they said of sending bitcoin without internet though it was through infrared with no much distance from the sender and receiver, at last was said of needed internet connection for the block to confirm the payment. Naturally i don't think is possible to send out bitcoin without the internet connection.

There is a related post within this topic read here more:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68482.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5397568.0

[o_e_l_e_o]

Still, there could be lots of limitations we may experience with physical bitcoin like we may not get exact denomination to pay or volatility of bitcoin prices might become a concern for the entire concept of paying in physical bitcoins.

Far more importantly is the issue of trust. You have to trust that the person who made the physical bitcoin did not secretly keep a copy of the private key for themselves and could steal your coins at any time. There are some ways to mitigate this such as using devices like OpenDimes, but these are not cheap and would be prohibitively expensive to scale to a full sized economy for a village or town. And even if you have complete trust that the private key has not been compromised, you still have no way of verifying how much coin is actually on the device without an internet connection to look up the address on a block explorer or to run your own node.

As I said previously, OP obviously has an internet connection somehow because he is posting here. The best solution will be for him to set up a hub which people an use to broadcast their transactions. And if the people in his community don't want to trust him to also be their node/block explorer, then they could use blockstream satellite to run their own node without and internet connection so they can verify OP is actually broadcasting their transaction as he says he is.

[Mr.right85]

I take this to be one of the short comings of bitcoin as, it always requires an Internet to work it. On like local financial institutions for which, they've got a substitute form of communicating your financial payments with various institutions without having to use the network.

For most developing nations, they've got the unstructured supplementary service data (ussd) that opens a gateway to enable transactions for low income earners and people without Internet enabled devices to have unrestricted tra sections.

I think this should be available for cryptocurrency as well. Tapping into local network to have it broadcasted or I don't know what am saying... just trying to wrap my head about how this is obtainable in fiat and the possibility of adopting it for crypto transactions.

[goldkingcoiner]

It all comes down to how can I transfer bitcoin payments to you without internet?

You can't. A transaction must be broadcast to the network via the internet in order to be verified and then mined in to a block.

That does not mean, however, that each individual needs internet access. You simply need some way of getting a transaction on to the internet. Each person can easily sign transactions on their offline devices, and then save those transactions as a small text file. All you need then is some way of getting those small text files to a person/node/service who will broadcast them for you. If you have a public WiFi spot in your community, then you can travel there and use that. If one person has a mobile device or similar with internet access, they could potentially set up a service broadcasting transactions on behalf of other people. There are services which allow you to send transactions via SMS as pointed out above. You could even transmit a transaction via phone call or radio to someone with an internet connection who could broadcast it on your behalf.

Since you are posting on this forum, you must have internet access somehow. Could you set up a method using whatever connection you are on now to broadcast transaction on behalf of your community?

Well hold on now. Would it be possible, technically, if for example he lived in a small village with a computer and a landline but without internet, and he had a fax machine, could he not develop a method of connecting the reconfigured fax to a node (which has internet access) through that landline and the node would broadcast to the blockchain? Technically he would be sending Bitcoin payments without internet connection.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Well hold on now. Would it be possible, technically, if for example he lived in a small village with a computer and a landline but without internet, and he had a fax machine, could he not develop a method of connecting the reconfigured fax to a node (which has internet access) through that landline and the node would broadcast to the blockchain? Technically he would be sending Bitcoin payments without internet connection.

That would certainly be possible, although there are probably easier ways of doing it than reprogramming a fax machine.

As I said in my reply which you quoted, the individuals themselves don't necessarily need internet access, but the transaction must reach the internet somehow. If there is a local node with internet access, then any method of getting your signed transaction to that local node to be broadcast would work. Transmitting over telephone lines via a modem, a reprogrammed fax machine, or something else, is certainly a possibility, as is radio, mesh networks, SMS, going there in person with the transaction on a USB drive, and so on.

[gunhell16]

Buy a bunch of those Starlink kits that let you connect to their sattelite infrastructure, and put them outside in some designated area, along with some WiFi boosters if you want.

Then half of the job is done. Then you just have to worry about making a cheap hardware wallet. Or possibly figure out how to make a basic bitcoin wallet for Nokia phones (which run Symbian).

I agree with what you said, Nowadays for a housing unit to have internet you need to connect with an internet provider so you can have a wifi connection. And for this to happen there must be a nearby satellite range of the internet provider you have chosen.

It used to be when there was no wifi, to have internet you must have broadband, to have access to communication in different parts of the world. And time passed when there was pocket wifi which is like broadband as well as portable. I remembered that in 2014 broadband and free internet data promo was the only way to open up to a cryptocurrency like this, wifi was not a trend at that time.

But even so, no one has invented anything that can transact bitcoin without using the internet.

[baro77]

Hi everybody

about this thread, I hope it's useful to remember that propagation time / mining interval ratio is of huge importance regarding forks/reorgs and so double spending issues, but also underline that it has a role in setting sufficient conditions about safe honest/byzantine nodes ratio... so an offline scenario is highly risky considering a Nakamoto Consensus network as a whole. I guess sharding could be a plan-b, but I'm currently not expert enough to speak about it, and more important it wouldn't be BTC anymore (at least not as we know it now)

[baro77]

But in practice, amount of stale/orphan block is very low. Based on BitMex monitoring tool[1], there are only 46 detected stale block since 20-08-2020[2].

[1] https://forkmonitor.info/notifications
[2] https://forkmonitor.info/feeds/stale_candidates/btc.rss

well, forking and subsequent reorgs are local events, so we cannot be sure forkmonitor offers a statistical reliable view from global/overall perspective. But agreeing it does (I'm sure actual tuning cause few forks/reorgs because of the 10sec/10min ratio), my point is that long propagation times due to offline nodes, only sporadically peering with the BTC network, would increase the risk.
Disconnected nodes/client cannot be sure to share an updated status of the ledger, and if they are enough to have miners between them, well.. enjoy the mess   ...the matter is that BTC has a global consensus model, but the way it works depends on quite strictly bounded propagation times (which cannot be taken for granted with a significant number of offline nodes)

[Pmalek]

The only way I know that you can transfer bitcoin without the internet is with a physical device such as an Opendime or this new SatsCard product that is being released. Both are by CoinKite but they both require a certain level of trust.

Opendimes aren't wallets that can transfer bitcoins in and out. They are physical USB-looking paper wallets. You generate its private key yourself by copying random files to it to provide enough entropy. That's the difference between an Opendime and a physical coin whose creator could have made a backup of its private key. There is no backup to make with the Opendime since the key is created locally on your side when you want to use it. That's the theory, at least. I am not aware of any known bugs where people have lost their coins that would suggest that someone else might have known the private key, unless it's a user mistake of course. 

When you hand someone an Opendime, you can't consider that a transaction has occurred and say that it did without the use of internet. It's the same as giving someone a piece of paper where there is an address or a QR code and a private key. There was no transaction. You just gave someone a funded address and a way to reveal the private key of that address that allows the person to spend the coins. When that person wants to spend their BTC, an on-chain transaction needs to be broadcasted using the revealed private key. 

[Ndabagi01]

Hello everyone, greetings and respect, I have just implemented a bitcoin BTC payment system in my small community with cold wallets but not all of them are young with internet access. Many of them have expressed their concern to me. It all comes down to how can I transfer bitcoin payments to you without internet?

I do not know if this possibility had been discussed before in this wonderful forum. But I need your help to see if all together we can achieve this.

I don't know much about this, but I do know that bitcoin uses a network, similar to a road map; I'm referring to the blockchain network. Every bitcoin mined is somehow conveyed and added to the blockchain through a series of confirmations that miners must verify online. I don't think this can be done without the internet.

[Asiska02]

This is much more achievable, but I don't believe it is now; perhaps later in the future when a system or a type of technology is introduced to make it possible. Bitcoin has a series of developmental stages with a specific program for that purpose. All of this sends signals to each other prior to any block confirmation into the blockchain. Sending bitcoin without an internet connection will create a barrier to communication between these nodes/software. For the time being, I don't think this is possible, but hopefully we can develop a system that allows us to send funds even when there is no internet or when there is a network outage.

[Ben Barubal]

  Here in our country, you can buy Bitcoin at a convenience store called 711 which is partnered with coins. ph which is an app wallet for cryptocurrency. It's just that using coins ph requires internet so you can use the bitcoin you bought at the 711 outlet store.

  or we also have a local app wallet that can buy Bitcoin through p2p using a bank account if you have one or a Gcash wallet going to the exchange from our fiat currency we will buy USDT to buy Bitcoin.

[Cantsay]

I do not know if this possibility had been discussed before in this wonderful forum. But I need your help to see if all together we can achieve this.

For now I don't think it's possible to transfer Bitcoin to other users without the use of Internet. And if you check other replies you'll see that the reasons have already been stated there. ( You need an internet connection to broadcast your transaction to the Blockchain).
Perhaps with the rate of development of technology nowadays and the constant development of Bitcoin, who knows maybe in the near future they might be able to figure out a way to send Bitcoin to other wallets without having to put your Bitcoin at risk i.e without losing your Bitcoin.

[TalkativeCoin]

This topic got me intrigued, so I did a little research on it. These techniques seem to be outdated, I don't know if they can be applied today, but they surely are something to take a look at.

Radio waves to transfer Bitcoins - https://twitter.com/nvk/status/1095340008293130242

SMS - https://rusnak.io/how-to-send-bitcoin-transactions-via-sms/

I would love to see some recreate sending them over a radio 

[btctaipei]

Hello everyone, greetings and respect, I have just implemented a bitcoin BTC payment system in my small community with cold wallets but not all of them are young with internet access. Many of them have expressed their concern to me. It all comes down to how can I transfer bitcoin payments to you without internet?

I do not know if this possibility had been discussed before in this wonderful forum. But I need your help to see if all together we can achieve this.

Hi ya,

Depends where you're at some places you maybe able to use SMS to bypass internet availability issues.
Wallet such as Machankura is one of them.

https://machankura.com/

for other locations I use https://blockstream.info/tx/push or http://explorerzydxu5ecjrkwceayqybizmpjjznk5izmitf2modhcusuqlid.onion/tx/push with private tor bridge nodes to push my transaction to bitcoin main net and avoids censorship.

as far as getting your full node sync'ed to full height, one cheap method would be to use blockchain streaming services, some of which is free, which can be found at https://blockstream.com/satellite/#satellite_network-coverage

You can build your own satellite kit or keep your own node up and in sync like I did, but its effectiveness rely depend where you set sail.  Generally speaking you need somewhere close to 2Kbyte/sec of download speed to maintain sync for an full node (for receive payment), but much lesser if you want to send payment (most likely around 200-300 bytes, less if done via PW2PKH)

[cloirecrom]

Nope you cannot. you need to have acess to internet to send it safely

[bitcoindusts]

There are methods stated on the earlier replies to send Bitcoin such as hardware wallet, QR code scanning etc.  But at the end of the day it needs to be broadcasted online for the blocks to confirm.  So there is no way to complete a transaction without using the internet.

It is worth noting that sending Bitcoin offline is way more complex than sending Bitcoin through internet.  Although these method increase the security I believe it has its own set of risks and limitation.

Methods of sending Bitcoin offline as stated on earlier replies

• hardware wallet
• paper wallets
• QR code transaction
• Air gapped device
• infrared

[o_e_l_e_o]

Wallet such as Machankura is one of them.

https://machankura.com/

This looks like a really cool project. Have you used it, and does it work nicely? Can you use it to send Lightning payments to anyone, or only to other accounts within their system? The biggest obvious downside here is that it is entirely custodial. Would be great if you could instead run your own wallet on your phone, and instead simply send and receive transaction data and the like with their service via SMS.

-snip-

You are confusing airgapped wallets with broadcasting transactions. It is of course entirely possible to run an airgapped wallet and transfer signed transactions to an online computer in order to be broadcast. What OP is asking is what to do if you do not have an online computer in order to broadcast your transaction. In this case you need to use something like radio (as I've discussed earlier in this thread) to send your transaction to someone who does have an internet connection and can broadcast your transaction for you.

[bitcoindusts]

-snip-

You are confusing airgapped wallets with broadcasting transactions. It is of course entirely possible to run an airgapped wallet and transfer signed transactions to an online computer in order to be broadcast. What OP is asking is what to do if you do not have an online computer in order to broadcast your transaction.

I am not confusing airgapped wallets with broadcasting transactions as far as I know, you see the hr on the reply before I stated methods of sending transaction offline, there is no way I stated a broadcasting transaction on that part did I? I just summarized what had been discussed on the earlier replies.   Anyway, still thank you to the clarification.

In this case you need to use something like radio (as I've discussed earlier in this thread) to send your transaction to someone who does have an internet connection and can broadcast your transaction for you.

Indeed since this idea and procedure had been brought up in the earlier replies I think there is no need for me to reiterate what you had been explained since it is very clear and easy to understand.