What happens to Bitcoin during an EMP / Solar Flare?

[Cummins59]

I really believe in bitcoin but I would think the best option is to convert to cash or junk silver as a means to protect your investment and maintain a spendable option. I remember during 9-11, the gov shut down all communications immediately and I remember the chaos during the blackout in the Eastern US. Both would have been troublesome situations trying to get supplies/food and pay with bitcoin whereas junk silver 90% quarter dimes halves and nickels would have still been accepted.

I do love the ease of payment with bitcoin though.

I am not trying to rain on anyone's parade. I am just being a realist because the emp or blackout WILL happen.

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[beetcoin]

I really believe in bitcoin but I would think the best option is to convert to cash or junk silver as a means to protect your investment and maintain a spendable option. I remember during 9-11, the gov shut down all communications immediately and I remember the chaos during the blackout in the Eastern US. Both would have been troublesome situations trying to get supplies/food and pay with bitcoin whereas junk silver 90% quarter dimes halves and nickels would have still been accepted.

I do love the ease of payment with bitcoin though.

I am not trying to rain on anyone's parade. I am just being a realist because the emp or blackout WILL happen.

sure it WILL happen, because it's happened before.. but how long will that be? 10 years? 100 years? 1,000 years? the last time it happened, where it would have wiped out or electronic systems, was in the mid 1850's.. and it hasn't happened since.

[2112]

People are posting fantasy and fiction as sources of information.

I wanted to post a concrete scientific information from a specialist, but unfortunately their web site is now gone. I'm going to cut-paste my post from almost two years ago. The referenced document is now gone, but you may be able to scrape some real information from various references to it and web caches.

What would happen if all satellites went down for a day?

Pretty close to a complete communications blackout. Vast majority of fiber optic links are synchronous with the clocks synchronized off of the GPS (or equivalents). If you disable GPS the clocks will drift off in less than a day and the communication will cease. Obviously rich countires have access to multiple precise atomic clocks (cesium, rubidium) and will be able to restore operation of some most critical fiber-optic links. Poorer countries will have to make do with the old radio-stabilized quartz oscillators.

The quickest to fail will be all CDMA carriers (Verizon,Sprint,etc.) because of high required timing precision. GSM carriers (ATT,T-Mobile) will fare better. Various 4G and 3G schemes will fail even faster, but almost all wireless cariers have the above older systems as a backup.

The old style T1/T3 connections (E1/E3 in Europe) will last the longest because they operate plesiochronously.

Afterwards there will be a great amount of energy spent to fix this vulnerability. But the current situation is as described: GPS stabilized clocks are everywhere.

http://www.chronos.co.uk/files/pdfs/wps/Dependency_of_Comms_on_PNT_Technology.pdf

[beetcoin]

here's the worst case scenario EMP from 1859 that would be catastrophic in today's terms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

there was an episode on the sun on "how the universe works" recently.. it was a good watch.

[Cummins59]

I really believe in bitcoin but I would think the best option is to convert to cash or junk silver as a means to protect your investment and maintain a spendable option. I remember during 9-11, the gov shut down all communications immediately and I remember the chaos during the blackout in the Eastern US. Both would have been troublesome situations trying to get supplies/food and pay with bitcoin whereas junk silver 90% quarter dimes halves and nickels would have still been accepted.

I do love the ease of payment with bitcoin though.

I am not trying to rain on anyone's parade. I am just being a realist because the emp or blackout WILL happen.

sure it WILL happen, because it's happened before.. but how long will that be? 10 years? 100 years? 1,000 years? the last time it happened, where it would have wiped out or electronic systems, was in the mid 1850's.. and it hasn't happened since.

I don't really care when it happens it is just the concern that I will holding a bunch a electronic shit that may not work and therefore I am screwed. Mining, spending and diversity into other assets is the only way to go. Anyone that banks entirely on e-coin which can be flicked off by the United Nations is not a realist.

[beetcoin]

I really believe in bitcoin but I would think the best option is to convert to cash or junk silver as a means to protect your investment and maintain a spendable option. I remember during 9-11, the gov shut down all communications immediately and I remember the chaos during the blackout in the Eastern US. Both would have been troublesome situations trying to get supplies/food and pay with bitcoin whereas junk silver 90% quarter dimes halves and nickels would have still been accepted.

I do love the ease of payment with bitcoin though.

I am not trying to rain on anyone's parade. I am just being a realist because the emp or blackout WILL happen.

sure it WILL happen, because it's happened before.. but how long will that be? 10 years? 100 years? 1,000 years? the last time it happened, where it would have wiped out or electronic systems, was in the mid 1850's.. and it hasn't happened since.

I don't really care when it happens it is just the concern that I will holding a bunch a electronic shit that may not work and therefore I am screwed. Mining, spending and diversity into other assets is the only way to go. Anyone that banks entirely on e-coin which can be flicked off by the United Nations is not a realist.

well, if you're afraid of a sunspot/EMP from the sun, what i'm saying is.. it shouldn't be at the top of your list of thing to be concerned about.

[cr1776]

Starfish prime is fact.  The other three books are based on fact with of course fiction as to the societal impact of an emp type event. Since no one (on earth) has been through such an event in the modern age, that type of speculation is by necessity fictional.

People are posting fantasy and fiction as sources of information.

I wanted to post a concrete scientific information from a specialist, but unfortunately their web site is now gone. I'm going to cut-paste my post from almost two years ago. The referenced document is now gone, but you may be able to scrape some real information from various references to it and web caches.

What would happen if all satellites went down for a day?

Pretty close to a complete communications blackout. Vast majority of fiber optic links are synchronous with the clocks synchronized off of the GPS (or equivalents). If you disable GPS the clocks will drift off in less than a day and the communication will cease. Obviously rich countires have access to multiple precise atomic clocks (cesium, rubidium) and will be able to restore operation of some most critical fiber-optic links. Poorer countries will have to make do with the old radio-stabilized quartz oscillators.

The quickest to fail will be all CDMA carriers (Verizon,Sprint,etc.) because of high required timing precision. GSM carriers (ATT,T-Mobile) will fare better. Various 4G and 3G schemes will fail even faster, but almost all wireless cariers have the above older systems as a backup.

The old style T1/T3 connections (E1/E3 in Europe) will last the longest because they operate plesiochronously.

Afterwards there will be a great amount of energy spent to fix this vulnerability. But the current situation is as described: GPS stabilized clocks are everywhere.

http://www.chronos.co.uk/files/pdfs/wps/Dependency_of_Comms_on_PNT_Technology.pdf

[cbeast]

What happens to Bitcoin if the Sun goes Supernovae?

[bbit]

Bitcoin will be the least of your worries as everyone will be looting and raping everything in sight

THis ^^   . We would all be dead by looters.

[gambian-]

Just curious, we are looking into opening a mining operation ( high scale ) but according to recent news the US just missed an EMP from the sun that would have put the US back in the 18th century. In other words it would have shorted out and melted anything electronic. At that point in time or if there was an EMP attack against the US what happens to Bitcoin? Does it immediately become worthless? You won't be able to do anything with them and if stored online they won't be retrievable as they will probably be erased when all hard drives are smoked.

I know this sounds like it can't happen but it very easily can.

Even if they are wiped back to "18th century", technology from other countries would help as well as the fact that we have all of the research on or offline which would be accessible from other countries
But yet again part of the internet is hosted in the US so don't know what would happen when it comes to servers and such

[BTCevo]

Just curious, we are looking into opening a mining operation ( high scale ) but according to recent news the US just missed an EMP from the sun that would have put the US back in the 18th century. In other words it would have shorted out and melted anything electronic. At that point in time or if there was an EMP attack against the US what happens to Bitcoin? Does it immediately become worthless? You won't be able to do anything with them and if stored online they won't be retrievable as they will probably be erased when all hard drives are smoked.

I know this sounds like it can't happen but it very easily can.

Even if they are wiped back to "18th century", technology from other countries would help as well as the fact that we have all of the research on or offline which would be accessible from other countries
But yet again part of the internet is hosted in the US so don't know what would happen when it comes to servers and such

The internet is hosted all over the world, it is short for international network

[allthingsluxury]

Likely, this is honestly the least of your worries. But regardless part of the system will survive and rebuild.

[kblaidd]

Found this thread as I was just wondering this - or something related. A lot of countries have a fairly tenuous connection to the internet. For example a 72 year old lady with a spade cut off Armenia's connection to the internet back in 2011. When Elon Musk's constellation is in orbit, total internet outages will become much less likely but I can still conceive of scenarios in which the internet becomes fragmented (e.g. combination of solar flare and 72 year old lady) in which case presumably local Bitcoin networks would continue to be function independently until the connection was restored... at which point if I understand correctly how the blockchain works... things would become very messy and potentially this could become devastating to the reputation of cryptocurrencies.

It seems to me that this could be protected against in software e.g. if nodes refused to work unless they had access to a number of geographically distant nodes. Or the network could even continue perhaps if there were a way to send transactions over short-wave radio (probably not a good scenario for a solar flare).