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Comment by zxcmx | Hacker News Reader

A more charitable approach would be to consider that bitcoin and "bug out bags" can be things you have for separate or related contingencies.

We live in wonderfully complex societies and history shows us there are a lot of failure modes well short of apocalypse.

To be clear I'm not a "bug out bag" kind of person but I do believe that some disaster preparation is useful. I also believe that there's a modest chance of serious financial turmoil in the medium to long term future.

Bitcoin is likely to hold some value in the event of a localised financial collapse.

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What’s the advantage of bitcoin against holding a diversified bundle of global equities or foreign currency in the event of a localised financial collapse?

Bitcoin can be sent and received anywhere in the world needing no than a raspi's worth of computing power.

Not many banking hoops to jump through, sanctions aren't at play, very difficult / impossible for a non-superpower country to exert control.

Greece and Venezuela are both recent examples of countries where people who owned Bitcoin faired substantially better than their peers who did not.

Did people in Greece and Venezuela fair substantially better than peers that had holdings of multiple foreign currencies?

Yes, easily, though the crisis in Greece started about the same time Bitcoin was created and lasted a few years after that.

The capital appreciation on this basket of global currencies has not moved an inch, interest rates worldwide are even lower today.

Meanwhile BTC has averaged 250% gains annually.

Not necessarily anything, but collapse of the dollar would have systemic impact, it wouldn't localised. And I suppose there is always some counter party risk with bank accounts or brokerage accounts, unless you hold the gold - or private keys

Why would bitcoin be spared this systemic impact?

I am trying to imagine how you can fit bitcoin in a bugout bag.

https://coinstop.io/products/billfodl

My (poorly worded) point is that without the internet, bitcoins in your bag don't have any immediate value.

One can expect the internet to eventually come back, maybe even in form of ham radio (in a post-apocalyptic world there would not be FCC to enforce ban on encryption).

Of course, in a post-apocalyptic world there would also not be an FCC to enforce bans on signal jamming...

The bitcoin protocol isn't encrypted. You can use the protocol over Ham radio as it is now.

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