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Comment by eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 | Hacker News Reader

Cryptocurrencies serve this purpose really nicely:

You can store them in your head by memorizing the cryptographic key ("seed phrase", e.g. random words of 128 bit of entropy).

So if you have to flee in emergency without being able to carry any physical belongings, you will still have your money.

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Don't forget that cryptcurrencies are valuable only because people think they are valuable. People might reconsider whats valuable during a war. Like food or something.

So is "normal" money

They are also unusable if your country's power grid/Internet access gets taken out by the enemy.

In theory a smaller economy might be able to run this sort of scheme by hand. Just depends on the crypto scheme used.

Only if you're 100% in crypto pretty much before the war gets serious. Otherwise the cost of crypto relative to your local assets is just going to rise like everything else - who wants to exchange for a currency which might be about to cease existing?

This applies to any safe-haven asset, so why is it relevant? :)

Crypto is a great utility in this respect, when physical commodities and fiats are severely regulated or vulnerable to seizure in times of strife.

But when using crypto, you are fundamentally trading high utility in exchange for high risk. The extremely volatility of crypto makes the stock market look like a playground. There’s nothing in the way of your life savings being reduced to zero when you need to make a life-changing transaction.

Nationalized paper fiats such as the US dollar are at least protected from extreme volatility by the Federal Reserve, but to obtain such protections, you must trade the high utility for encumbrances like heavy regulation.

I feel you are especially vulnerable to wrench attacks though.

Then memorize a second seed which holds a small amount for plausible deniability.

You'd have to make sure you deposited to the secondary wallet independently from your primary wallet or anybody remotely block explorer saavy could determine that you probably had another account with more crypto.

Or used Monero.

If countries start segregating the internet doesn't this break the cryptocurrency model?

https://www.euronews.com/2019/02/12/russia-planning-to-disco...

How would bitcoin work if, say, half the network couldn't talk to the other half?

Bitcoin, and probably any other cryptocurrency, uses flooding [1] to propagate transactions.

So it would be very difficult to prevent transactions from leaking out of or into the isolated zone:

A single peer in the whole country which is connected to the outside would be enough to leak all transactions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_(computer_networking)

How do you prevent double spend in the intervening period?

the risk is that a transaction you've accepted gets invalidated by a competing spend of its inputs in a chain coming out of a different "network zone"

so you wait for more block confirmations

If it is a valid threat model I don't know, but there are people streaming Bitcoin blocks over satellite for this very reason. So it is likely two islands of the network would be reconnected, provided that any one node is relaying blocks in this way.

I'd really like to see a serious analysis about the viability of a government, or an alliance of governments, to block / split the btc blockchain.

I find it hard to believe the US couldn't really do it if it wanted to, or even China (since most btc is mined there), but details like these make me wonder. Does anyone have any interesting material to read regarding this?

blocks can be broadcast over any communications medium. the shared state of the ledger would be smuggled in via any means necessary, from radio to messenger pigeon.

this remains true if retail payments migrate to second layer solutions. the important thing is sharing the same base layer anchor.

block confirmations would have to increase to mitigate the likely orphaning of chains coming out of different zones.

it's a good example of why achieving its civilisational infrastructure goals requires lightweight blocks.

Unless you're tortured.

And what's your defence against torture for literally any other class of asset?

Overseas real estate and other holdings was generally immune to that - in some cases you wouldn't even be able to hand it over to the occupying gov't if you wanted to (since the country with the wealth was hostile to that occupying gov't), in other cases property seized that way was returned through legal means, again through the judiciary of the country where the assets reside, as any contract or transfer under duress is illegitimate and the transfer is reversible.

It being in the vault or at least on an audit trail of some other institution who can later vouch about who seized it, as court evidence.

I doubt that'd work during a war. The best you can hope for is that your country wins and you can collect reparations.

Focus on getting your ass out of there and forget about your assets. Value of an asset to you is zero if you're dead.

That applies to any property and/or secrets hidden away, cryptocurrency or not. Smashing your kneecaps with a wrench until you start singing will work just as well no matter if you have stashed some gold away or if you've memorized a private key.

They would have to know you have crypto assets first. Easy to hide that bit of information.

You can memorize a second seed which holds a small amount for plausible deniability.

- Where are your millions?

- Take this Bitcoin wallet with 10 Bitcoins, please!

- Ok, but where are your millions?

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