If internet and/or power goes out, the whole world had collapsed before… 

 Right that's similar to what I said ..... the last thing we need to worry about is Bitcoin, Gold and or money ..... 

 Some form of trade/currency would become valuable relatively soon. I estimate about 3-4 months, since new systems for living would have been established by that time.

Panic only lasts so long, and people DO band together during hard times, even if entertainment plotlines often show otherwise. 

 Does what I said make sense 🧐 


This guy is wild 🤬 

 No. 

 He's likely correct that this is a failure point of BTC imo although you could argue against this I suppose in some ways.

In such cases its good to own 6-12 months of minimum expenses in GLD but not to have the bulk of your wealth in GLD.

Its useful to talk in probabilities instead of absolutes. Is BTC better than GLD? Depends on the scenario. There are trade offs with both. So the Q becomes whats more likely to happen and which asset mix gets you where you wanna go?

For eg, I think the chances of the power and internet going out for a long time are low in the near future (5 years) but not zero. in this case I would say keeping SOME Gold is a hedge against this low prob scenario. You would also want food store, water store, protection etc. The probabaility amy differ between location and persons sense of the world. V individual choice.

I think its more likely that power stays on, internet stays on and we have a very inflationary next 5-10 years as the can gets kicked further down the road. As such BTC makes more headways against inflation than GLD so its better to have the bulk of your wealth in BTC imo. 

 Thanks 😊 

 years ago it occurred to me that there are a lot of measures for intelligence.  one of the most valuable skills is how to give proper risk allocation to various scenarios.  when I was younger, I would read survivalist fiction and kinda   romanticize "prepping".  having some gold, ammo, tools etc is fun.

Realistically, if power and Internet go down and stay down, gold bugs and bitcoiners are equally fucked.  dead.
its silly to imagine a scenario like you'd see on TV. 

so back to my first point.  he's already a bitcoiner.  he understands human nature and scarcity.  now think about what's most likely, a post apocalyptic scenario where people are trading goods and services for gold? 
or a scenario like Venezuela, Argentina or Beirut?
  hyper inflation makes it hard but hardly impossible to buy the things you need.  gold is great but hardly better (fungible). 

 If I tried to buy something on the black market, I'd rather have a phone and btc than some gold that I need to prove is real, a file to shave some off, a scale to weigh it and a security team to keep me from getting shot.

its really hard for me to keep a straight face when people say things like this to me. 

 steam age if total grid down

only people who are prepared for it will be ok

also, in fact, you can even have diesel engines without electricity, but if we get blasted repeatedly by heavy sun-burps there won't be any working electrical things left

this is why i have it in my mind to build an underground structure with tin and carbon radiation shielding, to keep a few things going like some computers for accessing information and doing calculations

but outside of that, it's gonna be steam trains and herding cattle and goats and sheep and growing gardens and blacksmithing

there is a lot of tech that doesn't need electricity, and an increasing amount of optical computer and communications tech that won't be taken out by CMEs but it's fairly likely that by around 2035 there will be such events and loss of infrastructure and bricked everything 

 Any reference designs for such underground structure?
Are shipping containers in any way a good match for this?  

 If power goes out for long periods, then I suspect lead will be more important than gold or bitcoin. Besides, I hear it's good to diversify. 

 This. When the power goes out forever after WW3, a pointy stick will be more valuable than Bitcoin.    

 1. If the Internet “goes out” globally (likewise if encryption is broke , or electricity “stops working”, we’ll have far bigger problems on our hands than Bitcoin possibly not working. Not to mention that the electronic elements of vault security protecting your gold may be auto disabled, along with most other means of security, communication, and wealth access going down and causing global chaos. Unlikely 😉

2. Power/internet outages aren’t likely to be a global phenomenon to begin with (refer to pt 1), and as long as there is one computer, somewhere in the world, finding blocks and validating transactions, Bitcoin will persist. Even if it’s 1 or 10 or 100 machines, as additional computers come back online, they will be able to validate the rules of the network and continue performing their node and/or miner roles.

Ultimately, there isn’t really a logical scenario where internet downtime would impact Bitcoin in any meaningful way, and any technical disaster scenario severe enough to “stop” Bitcoin would also have every single person’s online banking and physical bank branches inaccessible, traffic lights disabled and car accidents lining up in every city, you catch my drift.

I’m not suggesting that your gold bug debate partner is necessarily doing this, but it’s relatively easy to fall into the mental trap of thinking the government is borderline all-powerful if they want to be, especially in the context of tech, when in reality they’re not. (In some cases they may be; e.g. second amendment rights - while important in principle - are relatively worthless when the government’s army can just drone blast everyone’s backyard). But the point is, if these hyperbolic scenarios were to come to pass — and effectively “breaking” bitcoin really would require such extreme (if not absurd) measures — it would exceed the level at which most bitcoiners (who are already sensitive to encroachments on freedom and privacy) would likely have memorized our twelve words and skipped town, long before it gets bad enough to compromise the Bitcoin itself. 

 Any scenario where grid wide power outages last long enough to start buying things with gold would end in such wide spread chaos and death, your boomer logic gold bug would be locked in a basement praying the power would come back on long enough for them to MadMax it down to the gas station to get one last gallon of gas for the generator.