What happens to bitcoin when the lights go out?

[Newmine]

In the U.S. we have had major power outages that last several days, see the NorthEast Blackout of 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
While this doesn't happen frequently, it still seems to be a problem for something that most people want to replace fiat.

How does bitcoin today benefit anyone if that happens?

Paper coins that can be printed by anyone still rely on confirmation. Otherwise rampant counterfeiting would take place and the coin would fail. Anyone else see this as a problem?

The network is completely reliant on the power being on at all times for any transaction to be confirmed. Not only power, but it must also have an internet connection. Would you say bitcoin is centralized around these two factors?

[S4VV4S]

The world does not revolve around the United States.
There are other countries too.

So I am pretty sure that Bitcoin will continue unless there is a worldwide blackout but even then there are establishments with photovoltaics

[jonald_fyookball]

In the U.S. we have had major power outages that last several days, see the NorthEast Blackout of 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
While this doesn't happen frequently, it still seems to be a problem for something that most people want to replace fiat.

How does bitcoin today benefit anyone if that happens?

Paper coins that can be printed by anyone still rely on confirmation. Otherwise rampant counterfeiting would take place and the coin would fail. Anyone else see this as a problem?

The network is completely reliant on the power being on at all times for any transaction to be confirmed. Not only power, but it must also have an internet connection. Would you say bitcoin is centralized around these two factors?

It's a global network.  Non-issue.

[freedomno1]

Global network non-issue indeed
The internet itself would kind of need to die besides we have the blockchain the ledger of all transactions that occurred so far to rely on if a power outage anywhere occurred

Just need to load the chain 

[Maharaja]

In the U.S. we have had major power outages that last several days, see the NorthEast Blackout of 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
While this doesn't happen frequently, it still seems to be a problem for something that most people want to replace fiat.

How does bitcoin today benefit anyone if that happens?

Paper coins that can be printed by anyone still rely on confirmation. Otherwise rampant counterfeiting would take place and the coin would fail. Anyone else see this as a problem?

The network is completely reliant on the power being on at all times for any transaction to be confirmed. Not only power, but it must also have an internet connection. Would you say bitcoin is centralized around these two factors?

The advantage of a global, decentralized network is that when nodes in the network can't contribute, other nodes in the network take over. I'm confident that power and internet connectivity are not much of a SPOF for crypto's.

[Newmine]

In the U.S. we have had major power outages that last several days, see the NorthEast Blackout of 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
While this doesn't happen frequently, it still seems to be a problem for something that most people want to replace fiat.

How does bitcoin today benefit anyone if that happens?

Paper coins that can be printed by anyone still rely on confirmation. Otherwise rampant counterfeiting would take place and the coin would fail. Anyone else see this as a problem?

The network is completely reliant on the power being on at all times for any transaction to be confirmed. Not only power, but it must also have an internet connection. Would you say bitcoin is centralized around these two factors?

It's a global network.  Non-issue.

I am not talking global scale.

You are missing my point. It doesn't matter where it happens. What does an American, Egyptian, German, Russian, Australian, Insert any country or people, do when it happens to them locally. You have no physical currency that can be traded, right? If you needed food on day 2, you couldn't buy anything from a neighbor or whoever.

[jonald_fyookball]

Obviously bitcoin couldn't be used in normal fashion with no electricity(but
you could trade physical bitcoins, thumb drives that contain wallets,
paper wallets).  

Would require trust and you couldn't divide a wallet.  You could also
write IOUs, use precious metals, barter, or pray to the great cloud dragon.  

EDIT: perhaps physical bitcoins should come with time stamp of last
Network synch, so in case of electrical outage, would show recent time,
And this would partially mitigate the trust factor.

[hello_good_sir]

We're already in this situation.  Many people never use cash.  I went a couple of years without ever having a single piece of paper money in my wallet.

[beatljuice]

A lot of people don't carry cash any more. Do you think credit/debt card swipers work without power? Always a good idea to have something to trade easy to hand whether it's cash, gold/silver, some printed wallets with small denominations maybe. The wallets should probably be worth just 1 or 2 satoshi since Bitcoin'll be worth a million $ by the end of 2014

If things are really bad you might like to have a big cache of firewood, propane, gas, diesel, batteries. Actually now that I say that - I think batteries would make a pretty good temporary currency if the lights go out. Farly easy to keep some AA and AAA batteries in your pocket and people would surely want them.

[serenitys]

What happens to bitcoin when the lights go out?

Same thing that happens when the internet goes out...

[blacksails]

In the U.S. we have had major power outages that last several days, see the NorthEast Blackout of 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
While this doesn't happen frequently, it still seems to be a problem for something that most people want to replace fiat.

How does bitcoin today benefit anyone if that happens?

Paper coins that can be printed by anyone still rely on confirmation. Otherwise rampant counterfeiting would take place and the coin would fail. Anyone else see this as a problem?

The network is completely reliant on the power being on at all times for any transaction to be confirmed. Not only power, but it must also have an internet connection. Would you say bitcoin is centralized around these two factors?

It's a global network.  Non-issue.

I am not talking global scale.

You are missing my point. It doesn't matter where it happens. What does an American, Egyptian, German, Russian, Australian, Insert any country or people, do when it happens to them locally. You have no physical currency that can be traded, right? If you needed food on day 2, you couldn't buy anything from a neighbor or whoever.

Interesting thoughts. I can only think of Sweden (I live there) were most people don't use cash, but charge cards.
If something like this happened here most people would run out of money in a matter of hours.

A solution to a scenario like this would be to have cash for situations like this. From a bitcoin perspective we could print out paper wallets in shape of banknotes. That would require some trusted author though, just to make sure that the private keys on them would not be stored anywhere else.

[notbatman]

The Carrington event

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

[orpington]

it disappears

[trc]

Revolution^TM?

Pray the nanite Gods to provide temporary power to access your cold storage.

We'd come up with ways to generate power and keep it up somehow. Solar, wind, waves... But the world's banking system would be irrecoverably damaged already. If all else fails, back to bartering I guess.

[DooMAD]

A lot of people don't carry cash any more. Do you think credit/debt card swipers work without power?

Sums it up pretty well.  Along with the card swipers, everyone seems to forget that their bank's computers won't work without electricity and neither will the ATMs people use to get their money out.  What little cash you have in your pocket is all you'll have access to and it probably won't last very long.

[Jace]

How does bitcoin today benefit anyone if that happens?

Unlike Payal, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Wire transfers, ATM machines, online banking, and pretty much ALL forms of payment nowadays that would all DIE in this event, Bitcoin simply keeps on running for the rest of the world (except the US). And that's even just temporary. As soon as the power is back, Bitcoin will catch up and everybody's happy again.

Pretty cool huh, this Bitcoin stuff!

[zolace]

Well it depends where the lite goes out, I think is the whole world then it will be on pause.  Unless the information gets wiped out.

[BitCoinsLOL]

In the U.S. we have had major power outages that last several days, see the NorthEast Blackout of 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
While this doesn't happen frequently, it still seems to be a problem for something that most people want to replace fiat.

How does bitcoin today benefit anyone if that happens?

Paper coins that can be printed by anyone still rely on confirmation. Otherwise rampant counterfeiting would take place and the coin would fail. Anyone else see this as a problem?

The network is completely reliant on the power being on at all times for any transaction to be confirmed. Not only power, but it must also have an internet connection. Would you say bitcoin is centralized around these two factors?

It's a global network.  Non-issue.

I am not talking global scale.

You are missing my point. It doesn't matter where it happens. What does an American, Egyptian, German, Russian, Australian, Insert any country or people, do when it happens to them locally. You have no physical currency that can be traded, right? If you needed food on day 2, you couldn't buy anything from a neighbor or whoever.

Who in their right mind would have all their money in BTC. The blackout wasn't that big a deal I was directly effected by it. You underestimate the resiliency of people.

[Beliathon]

Gas generators and landlines for the win, noobs. Damn kids today, don't even know how to change the oil in their cars, let alone how to survive 3 days without Netflix and Smartphones.

[TopherB]

In the U.S. we have had major power outages that last several days, see the NorthEast Blackout of 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
While this doesn't happen frequently, it still seems to be a problem for something that most people want to replace fiat.

How does bitcoin today benefit anyone if that happens?

Paper coins that can be printed by anyone still rely on confirmation. Otherwise rampant counterfeiting would take place and the coin would fail. Anyone else see this as a problem?

The network is completely reliant on the power being on at all times for any transaction to be confirmed. Not only power, but it must also have an internet connection. Would you say bitcoin is centralized around these two factors?

It's a global network.  Non-issue.

I am not talking global scale.

You are missing my point. It doesn't matter where it happens. What does an American, Egyptian, German, Russian, Australian, Insert any country or people, do when it happens to them locally. You have no physical currency that can be traded, right? If you needed food on day 2, you couldn't buy anything from a neighbor or whoever.

I've had snowstorms where I have been stuck in my house for four days. Temporary problems are a fact of life. We soldier on.