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Traffic From Syria Disappears From Internet

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Re: Traffic From Syria Disappears From Internet

#51

Post by ericd »

BCM43 wrote: post #7
cookiecaper wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is what bitcoiners and similar don't understand. It's not like your internet connection will remain happy and stable while the rest of the world goes to hell around us. Telecomms will be a first-class target, and most systems have some pretty central points of failure that would make juicy (and easy) targets. In such a situation, if you've chosen to use an electronic cryptocurrency dependent on things like r…

What would you suggest people put their money in then? Gold? Guns? The problems you describe are problems for just about every currency right now. How much of your money do you have in cash, and how much is in the bank? Do you think you will still be able to use the bank in a situation like the one you describe?

Guns, Cigarettes, and Everclear should all be fairly value dense in that scenario. Gold should do well too - the value that people assign to it due to life-long indoctrination plus its immutability as a valuable substance through history should help it do much better in those scenarios than fiat currencies whose backers have obviously disintegrated.

Food, water, and fuel would obviously be valuable too, but they're harder to carry a lot of.

Re: Traffic From Syria Disappears From Internet

#52

Post by bitcartel »

jlarocco wrote: post #46
greghinch wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this obsession with gold. Yes it's shiny and has historically represented value and wealth, but people apply it as the unit of currency society will fall back on in times of crisis, like a civil war. If there's fighting and chaos all around and infrastructure is cut off, clean water, food, medicine, and weapons are pretty much all that will hold any value.

Gold is a value store. It's valuable because it can be traded for other stuff. It's the same as money - a stack of $100 bills is useless except to buy other stuff. The things you listed are valuable because they have direct utilitarian value for drinking, eating, defense, etc. Gold is valuable because it can be traded for things with utilitarian value.

Exactly. Gold is a universal currency, you can use it for barter pretty much anywhere on the planet.

Gold coins (British Sovereigns) were supposedly part of the emergency survival kit given to US and British fighter pilots during the first Iraq war.

Re: Traffic From Syria Disappears From Internet

#53

Post by lmkg »

greghinch wrote: post #16
3am wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold and guns would both be much better decisions that Bitcoin in a raging civil war. So would food, and transport to safe haven. Bitcoin would be insane. Even if you had extra money, that's what Swiss bank accounts are for. edit: to be clear, the utilities of these items is relative, think a DAG. gold > bitcoin. food > gold. transport to safe haven > food,guns. Maybe. Medicine > gold, also. Not trying to say anythin…

I don't get this obsession with gold. Yes it's shiny and has historically represented value and wealth, but people apply it as the unit of currency society will fall back on in times of crisis, like a civil war. If there's fighting and chaos all around and infrastructure is cut off, clean water, food, medicine, and weapons are pretty much all that will hold any value.

I dislike gold as an investment vehicle, but it is a sensible investment during a localized civil war that does not impact the global economy.

During a civil war, the local economy will be destabilized. This means that local production will drop off, and most things you want you will have to import (this includes the service of fleeing the country). In addition, your local currency will have become destabilized (possibly permanently), so outsiders won't find it desirable. Gold has a market outside your country, so outsiders would be willing to accept it as currency.

Basically, what you want is a currency with a global value, because it won't be affected by local conditions. Gold satisfies this criterion, as does USD in many cases.

I think most of the debate upthread can be summarized thusly: This criterion depends on a separation between local economic conditions, and global ones. In the US there is not such a distinction. If we suffer an economic collapse (whatever the cause), we're taking the world with us. As such, there is no currency with the properties that people are looking for.

Re: Traffic From Syria Disappears From Internet

#54

Post by bitcartel »

gknoy wrote: post #41
greghinch wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this obsession with gold. Yes it's shiny and has historically represented value and wealth, but people apply it as the unit of currency society will fall back on in times of crisis, like a civil war. If there's fighting and chaos all around and infrastructure is cut off, clean water, food, medicine, and weapons are pretty much all that will hold any value.

I recall reading a series of blog posts written by someone who survived a south american economic collapse. (I forget what the URL was.) His perspective was that there is a VERY thin veneer on civilization, after which weapons, a fortified home, large cars, and absolute paranoia seem to be the best bet. Some highlights: - small gold rings are good currency: you can easily divide it, and you can carry small amounts on…

Rather than cutting your ring into small pieces, check out this credit card sized gold bar which you can tear off into 1 gram pieces.

http://www.combibar.com/products/50g-combibar-gold/

Re: Traffic From Syria Disappears From Internet

#55

Post by benjoffe »

kmcd wrote: post #36

> There is civil war. There is NO civil war in Syria. There is a campaign of terrorism waged by NATO, specifically Turkey , Qatar, Isreal, UK, France to secure the transit for the South Pars/North Dome gas field. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/20128513344... What's at stake? About $200 billion annual output between Iran & Qatar. That's about $360,000 per SECOND. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pa…

> About $200 billion annual output between Iran & Qatar. That's about $360,000 per SECOND

That's $360,000 per MINUTE (not second).

200*10^9/365/24/60/60 = 6342

Re: Traffic From Syria Disappears From Internet

#56

Post by mrb »

cookiecaper wrote: post #6
venomsnake wrote: post #4

There is civil war. And cables will always be delicious target for any party. No bank transfers for the fleeing elite or being able to deal with external affairs, total blackout for the defender (military and police have their own systems usually so the ruling party is not that affected) The situation in Syria is dangerous. A failed state in that location ... Arab Peninsula in the 2013 is the Balkans in 1913 ...

And this is what bitcoiners and similar don't understand. It's not like your internet connection will remain happy and stable while the rest of the world goes to hell around us. Telecomms will be a first-class target, and most systems have some pretty central points of failure that would make juicy (and easy) targets. In such a situation, if you've chosen to use an electronic cryptocurrency dependent on things like r…

"if you've chosen to use an electronic cryptocurrency dependent on things like robust network and electrical infrastructure to function as your primary value store, you're going to have a bad time."

Apparently you are unaware of the tools to build offline transactions. Or of the ability to store bitcoins in your head (brain wallet).

Want to send bitcoins to someone without Internet? Just communicate to him/her the brain wallet passphrase (http://brainwallet.org). Or sign an offline transaction on your computer, and send him the raw TX (~300 bytes) printed on paper.

That's the beauty of Bitcoin! The sender still has options to transmit bitcoins despite being offline. Sure these mechanisms are clunky; communicating a brain wallet passphrase gives access to the whole amount associated to the private key, but I imagine in such dire situations (civil war, no internet) you are more concerned with abilities to for example send money to your son in another country, and you would trust him with the brain wallet. Also, nothing prevents you from splitting different amounts of bitcoins in different brain wallets (eg. 3 wallets containing 10, 50, and 250 BTC).

Also, a country under civil war typically destroys the value of their government currency via huge inflation. This is actually a perfect example to demonstrate why Bitcoin is superior to inflated fiat money!

Re: Traffic From Syria Disappears From Internet

#57

Post by greghinch »

lmkg wrote: post #53
greghinch wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this obsession with gold. Yes it's shiny and has historically represented value and wealth, but people apply it as the unit of currency society will fall back on in times of crisis, like a civil war. If there's fighting and chaos all around and infrastructure is cut off, clean water, food, medicine, and weapons are pretty much all that will hold any value.

I dislike gold as an investment vehicle, but it is a sensible investment during a localized civil war that does not impact the global economy. During a civil war, the local economy will be destabilized. This means that local production will drop off, and most things you want you will have to import (this includes the service of fleeing the country). In addition, your local currency will have become destabilized (poss…

> If we suffer an economic collapse (whatever the cause), we're taking the world with us. As such, there is no currency with the properties that people are looking for.

Yes exactly. And I hear too many people in the US say they feel like we are on the verge of some kind of massive revolution or civil war, which seems preposterous to me. Your average person would rather just get by than get involved in a bloody, civil conflict. There is a growing economic divide in the US, as well as a somewhat large rate of unemployment (mostly made up of the young and self-entitled, and older folks who's skills have become fairly obsolete), but compare it to countries where there have been actual civil wars in recent times and we're nowhere near that level of destitution and disparity. You need to get into multi-generational inequity, corruption, and despair before enough people will put aside their own relative comfortable complacency to get involved in armed conflict.

So buying gold for the coming apocalypse is silly.

Re: Traffic From Syria Disappears From Internet

#58

Post by snarfy »

cookiecaper wrote: post #6
venomsnake wrote: post #4

There is civil war. And cables will always be delicious target for any party. No bank transfers for the fleeing elite or being able to deal with external affairs, total blackout for the defender (military and police have their own systems usually so the ruling party is not that affected) The situation in Syria is dangerous. A failed state in that location ... Arab Peninsula in the 2013 is the Balkans in 1913 ...

And this is what bitcoiners and similar don't understand. It's not like your internet connection will remain happy and stable while the rest of the world goes to hell around us. Telecomms will be a first-class target, and most systems have some pretty central points of failure that would make juicy (and easy) targets. In such a situation, if you've chosen to use an electronic cryptocurrency dependent on things like r…

Currency should never be used as a primary value store. You should minimally hold as much currency as you need to perform the transaction. The only purpose of currency is to facilitate trade.

Re: Traffic From Syria Disappears From Internet

#59

Post by zatara »

gknoy wrote: post #41
greghinch wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this obsession with gold. Yes it's shiny and has historically represented value and wealth, but people apply it as the unit of currency society will fall back on in times of crisis, like a civil war. If there's fighting and chaos all around and infrastructure is cut off, clean water, food, medicine, and weapons are pretty much all that will hold any value.

I recall reading a series of blog posts written by someone who survived a south american economic collapse. (I forget what the URL was.) His perspective was that there is a VERY thin veneer on civilization, after which weapons, a fortified home, large cars, and absolute paranoia seem to be the best bet. Some highlights: - small gold rings are good currency: you can easily divide it, and you can carry small amounts on…

http://www.ferfal.com/

Re: Traffic From Syria Disappears From Internet

#60

Post by mrb »

venomsnake wrote: post #43
bitcoinMini wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how about S6c56bnXQiBjk9mqSYE7ykVQ7NzrRy https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mini_private_key_format

How secure is this stuff?

It is very secure as long as those ~30 characters are chosen randomly.

Also you need to learn about http://brainwallet.org/ to store bitcoins in your head by merely memorizing a human-friendly passphrase!

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