Hacker News Reader

Comment by venomsnake | Hacker News Reader

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 ...

View on HN

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 robust network and electrical infrastructure to function as your primary value store, you're going to have a bad time.

This doesn't even contemplate the additional issue for bitcoin and its derivatives: the blockchain depends on a consistent, global view of network transactions, and apocalyptic-type network segmentation will cause severe forking in the blockchain, further diminishing the utility and therefore the value of the [already worthless] cryptocoins.

"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!

Even with the printout in hand, how does the recipient actually make the coin "theirs"? Can't the sender thwart the transaction if they gain Internet access before the recipient is able to (by transferring the coin to a wallet that's ready to receive it right away)?

People can write bad checks or create fake money orders too. It holds as much value as the faith the recipient puts into it.

Which is why many places don't accept checks. In other words they don't consider it a valid currency.

Yea, bitcoin almost completely fails as a currency when the receiver doesn't have an internet connection.

Many people still receive their pay in the form of a paper check. I personally pay my rent with a paper check, or at least have my bank send one out. Debit cards are certainly more popular and less risky than your personal check though.

Generally your employer isn't going anywhere, and if a paycheck bounces, you will see them the next day and raise the issue (also, they are legally bound to make good on that debt). I wouldn't take a one-time contract job and expect to get paid by check after handing over the work, any more than I would accept a check from a Craigslist user in exchange for an item (unless the check was allowed to clear prior to my side of the exchange occurring).

I would not say that a Bitcoin Check is the best way to facilitate immediate private party sales, but business to consumer sales/importation may be possible with a Bitcoin Check, as the supplier can clear the check before sending goods.

Additionally there could be satellite hotspots that could act as exchanges when landline or wireless networks are down. Bitcoin is probably not perfect, but could be useful for money transfer even in areas where the net isn't robust.

Hell, some of us don't even accept the word checks! Let alone cheques which seem archaic to someone who doesn't ever use cash (last used about 6 months ago), regularly used... Never.

With the printout of the raw TX, the recipient would just broadcast it on the p2p network (sendrawtransaction), that's how he would give himself the coins.

As to your other questions, it make no sense. In what situation would person A, offline in a state of civil war, absolutely need to send money to person B, and then would need to steal the coins back??

Your description seems to assume that A is offline and B is online. What happens when two bitcoin users are both offline for a prolonged period and A gains access first and moves his BTC to another wallet before B can submit the transaction? What mechanism beyond individual trust permits this to be an effective means of monetary transaction? Would you trust someone writing you a check in a war zone with no access to a bank to not later put in a stop payment on that check?

If the 2 parties are both offline, then yes the sender needs to be trusted to guarantee he won't attempt to steal the coin back.

Yes.

I'm going to go with, no. Having easily stockpiled and manipulated hard currency (fiat or no) makes waaay more sense to me than some combination of words or what have you in my brain wallet.

I don't think there's been any real demonstration of the use of bitcoins for non-connected transactions--theory does not a practical application make.

Better off trading bottle caps or ring tabs.

No offense, but you sound like someone who doesn't really understand the technology.

A TX record is signed, which proves that only I wrote it. It does not immediately have to become part of the "consensus ledger" i.e. blockchain. All I have to do is not spend the same money twice, and I can keep local records. Once the net comes back up, everyone can enter in their TX records manually and let the network figure out the rest. Any attempts to spend the same money twice would be prevented unless you somehow managed to spend from the same wallet in both fractions of the bitcoin network, which seems like it would be hard to pull off.

Yes there are people building real world offline transactions. See the whole API: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Raw_Transactions Typically they use this API for offline cold storage wallets.

Any offline transaction which is spec'ed with JSON-RPC doesn't pass my apocalypse test.

I'm sorry dude, but if the bombs are flying and buildings burning, just admit it: Bitcoin is not a suitable currency.

> but if the bombs are flying and buildings burning

And state issued currency that could be worthless after a civil war or invasion would be better? Technically you could argue that bitcoin, being not issued by a government or controlling entity and possibly still in use in less volatile parts of the world is more likely to retain its value, as would a cold-storage BTC wallet hidden until afterwards when the internet is back.

However if you are thinking along the lines of of gold, silver and gems, then yes, bitcoin can't compare .

>However if you are thinking along the lines of of gold, silver and gems, then yes, bitcoin can't compare .

I would add the dollar to that list as well.

And yet somehow you think that the existing currency/banking network (which is still a network, and still travels over either telephone lines or the Internet, mind you) would somehow be immune to the apocalypse. Dream on.

Your best bet then is probably gold.

This doesn't deal with the other thing I mentioned, which is that the blockchains will fork without a global view of the network. This means you could spend btc gained before the fork in one segment and spend them again in another segment, and that if you got new btc in one segment, it would be invalid in all the other segments.

Also, as another has pointed out, this is ridiculously implausible when compared with other currency options.

Many invest money in btc that could have been invested in a hard commodity with emergency currency value like gold or silver. Gold and silver will continue to exist in a normal, usable fashion regardless of the state of online connectivity.

I was almost with you until the end. Gold/silver suffer a similar problem, unless you actually physically possess the metal then the certificates are of little value unless they are redeemable via some trusted 3rd party. In a shit hits the fan scenario, no such trust is likely to be present.

Yes, I agree. Those who hold gold through passthroughs, depositories, or similar mechanisms are not likely to fare well. It's only applicable for metals owned directly.

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?

I will coin two phrases now:

1. Venomsnake's law - every discussion on Hacker's news degrades to bitcoins.

2. Goldilocks apocalypse - every goldbug, bitcoin miner and similar depends on the crash of civilization in just the right way that everything will be the same but his economic decisions will put him on top with the pure strength of speculation. Whatever assets you have the federal government will be able to confiscate if the need is dire enough. Whatever protection the law gives you can be reverted.

There is no safety. To be able to claim and hold to a property you rely on massive infrastructure. If the dollar and the federal government crashes - it will vaporize too.

To be fair, even gold (and as I'm loathe to put in the same category, bitcoin) speculators aren't really relying upon a full-out goldilocks apocalypse for their assets to appreciate, just a continuation of the current trend of currency devaluation of the U.S. dollar. I think you're right that if something really bad happened (read: worse than 2008 or 2001) then the men with guns would take your gold and your bitcoins (though honestly, they probably won't give a shit about the bitcoins) has they've done before and will do again.

Not if you're a subsistence farmer out in the boonies with a bunch of hidden, unregistered guns. :P

As for gold though, it takes a long-term view of the apocalypse. In the immediate aftermath, no one will care about gold. Guns, food, etc will all be at a premium. It might take a decade or so for people to care about gold, and even then enough of the population will probably be dead that gold can be had by looting for jewellery that no longer has an owner.

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 anything special about gold, I mostly agree that it has very little use to justify its value.

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.

> 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.

Our economies are finally about to collapse under the weight of their impossibility, and that's likely to cause some kind of upheaval. That's not about Ethnic Group A hating Ethnic Group B, even though something like that may well happen all around Europe, for example. Economic rebalancing/calamity will come first though.

> 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.

You could also argue that if Europe collapses, it will take down the US too. It could go either way, or there may be some kind of localized collapse. All continents have their Powers That Be, and those of other continents might well be able to detach themselves from one continent going down. All that really matters is order, and the ability to keep things chugging along.

In absolute life-or-death situations, yes. But as soon as we move even a tiny bit past that point, history shows we seek universally recognized, convenient mediums of exchange. And for every culture that has access to them, precious metals have fulfilled this role since year dot.

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 your person. For some reason, people valued that more than paper money. - a black market for guns (and ammo) will spring up; cheap POS guns will have ludicrous prices, so if you plan to have one, it's wise to have them before The Collapse - Don't open your door for anyone. - Be armed. Seriously. - Be prepared to seriously consider whether to drive _through_ a pedestrian, rather than risk that his friends will kidnap you as soon as you stop. - Neighborhood friendships are extremely valuable.

.. that's all I can remember off the top of my head. I'm sure someone else can link the originals. Basically, though, it's comparatively easy to stockpile small pieces of gold jewelry ahead of time, and people will tend to accept it in trade. (Water/food/bullets/guns are of course even more valuable, but those aren't as transportable.)

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/

http://www.ferfal.com/

Exactly. I wonder how many here manage to pry their eyes open.

During a war, perhaps. But once things settle down I think gold will be the go to unit of currency.

In a functional society no one wants to pay for their goods with food or water.

Right but then wouldn't you just go back to standard currency?

No, because things can be sufficiently stable that people are no longer in contest over the fundamentals like food and water, but not sufficiently to have a widely-standardized currency.

Gold is useful because everyone, everywhere recognizes its value independent of any other entity. This happens simply as a function of gold's rarity and manipulability; if you're looking for a natural resource to stand in as a currency, gold meets the requirements better than other materials. This is so, and will remain so despite any human ongoings.

Gold is special because of its universal value, and it is especially useful in refugee scenarios where your war-ravaged currency has lost value, but your asylum country still has a stable economy. Gold is easily concealed, transported, and exchanged. My father's family converted much of their assets to gold when fleeing to the US from Vietnam at the end of the war.

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.

Here is one explanation, but perhaps not the one you were looking for: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/131430755/a-chemis...

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.

Gold is a good high value density financial medium. Regardless of the objective value, it always has been and always will be in demand. It's best for carrying value from one side of an economic crisis to the other, and taking advantage of some good deals that crop up in the meantime. If anything the high value density makes it hard for anything but large transactions.

Guns? Well, ammo really. Guns are plentiful in the USA and are extremely durable. Ammo is more suitable to currency type usage, being handy during the crisis, comes in small units comparable to coins, and the value of each is around a dollar making it convenient for smaller commonplace transactions.

"put their money in?" are you seeking an instability-hedged value store or trying to maximize the utils for given items?

Water and fuel.

>What would you suggest people put their money in then? Gold? Guns?

How about: potable water, non-perishable food, gasoline, batteries, tools (including weapons), and other commodities that will be scarce and have intrinsic value during a crisis?

>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?

I believe cyprus had to find out the hard way as well sans civil war. They had internet, but no access to bank accounts (still very limited to this day). And I doubt the the 25%+ in spain and greece are much better off…

Call me a nut but at this point, people who have the means should put their money in things they can live off of sustainably or at least partially (PV's, rain water catch, DIY small greenhouse) because things are not getting any better globally and we seriously can't expect the printing press to get us out of this.

Oh yeah, DOW closed above 15000. quelle chance.

Yes, clearly, it's better in all cases to use paper fiat currency dependent on things like a robust, modern, well-defended, and rationally-operated government infrastructure to function as your primary value store.

> the blockchain depends on a consistent, global view of network transactions

Actually the chief effect of the continual hashing is robustness against netsplits. By defining the longer-hashed chain as prevailing, global reconciliation is actually possible. All protocol-following parties agree - double spends on the smaller side lose out.

In a case where the entire country is cut from the internet double spending will be insignificant - the coins cannot transfer out of the country, so it will be minor.

Transfer the private keys ahead of time, to a program which waits for a significant split and then automatically spends to a new address.

Which means that one can't really trust generic spends in the cut-off area.

"And this is what bitcoiners and similar don't understand."

Replace "bitcoiners" with "crypto-anarchists" and your argument is more plausible. I like bitcoin, but I have never considered it the answer to a civil war type situation. In those situations, wealth is equivalent to utility (food, gas, water, and yes, guns).

1) We're heading closer and closer to a world where none of this bullshit(pardon my Frank) can happen.

2) You think REGULAR currencies have much more value than cryptocurrencies during these types of crises?

3) If Syria hypothetically still has a working "intranet" but not a working "internet", then Bitcoin will continue working just fine for them while they're not connected to the rest of us. After the Syrians re-connect, their branch will be withered, but not dead. Re-merging will be automatic when the Internet returns.

Re-merging does not work like that. All Syrian transactions will effectively be reversed. That's assuming that they managed to mine anything, with such a small fraction of the usual computing power available.

The difficulty level adjusts to the mining power. And only transactions that were double-spent will be reversed, since nodes will re-broadcast transactions from the short chain onto the long chain, and those that weren't double spent will be accepted.

There's another important class of transactions that are reversed: mining outputs. In order to accept a payment from someone while isolated from the network, you have to carefully check that all the coins they're sending you were generated before the split, or else those coins will evaporate at some point in the future.

>The difficulty level adjusts to the mining power.

But difficulty adjustments occur every 2016 blocks, not instantly. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty#How_often_does_the_dif...

Assuming that we can just reconnect the segments after a brief downtime, like we do now if a backhoe accidentally hits the line into your apartment complex or something. Such a situation is not necessarily so simply resolved in wartime, when opposing factions have a serious interest in depriving telecomms from one another.

If we dropped you into the middle of Syria right now, would you rather have: 1. $10,000 in USD currency 2. $10,000 USD equiv in gold 3. $10,000 USD equiv in bitcoin

I'm pretty sure the only practical answer is (1). That pretty much answers your question (2).

Interesting. But if 1. Was not available would you rather have 2. Or 3.?

Obviously 2. Bitcoin is pretty useless if you don't have a dependable electrical grid or internet. I'd rather have $10,000 in USD, EUR or GLD than $1M in Bitcoin in a war zone where I had no other funds. Heck, I'd rather have gasoline or coffee than bitcoin.

And like that, a discussion about the Syrian internet blackout devolves into an argument about bitcoin and currency.

Bitcoin isn't to defend against the end of the world as we know it, its to defend against the end of your country as you know it.

This time when you end up at Ellis Island, you don't just have the shirt on your back.

I never saw anything to suggest that Bitcoin is built to withstand Syria-style collapse of society. (Not to say that we shouldn't try to design our networks to survive that if possible.) It looks more like a way to counterbalance gradual bullshitization of monetary systems of otherwise civilized societies.

You can memorize the keys to a bitcoin account and carry your wealth with you in your head until you get to a place with an internet connection. Better that than diamonds in tubes of toothpaste.

Go on :) Lets see how long it will take, and how many times you will be able to reproduce it without error.

qWoXWwQQQyVF69SkJfGgG/x9ehR8NQmXwDvLxMbh2iALkGe0nd+NiFgvtXseoHn0 mEfjKXDbMMY7wyU8Xv1yNQGYw/V+pnfG/qiw8dirIF5jQOQprS/5YWt2Ts803pzu Y8V+FhMHoKtKozHKemH6THRQ0QbasdlO21+uwk7HGtKZh60NSEre+90I9GNEE8lO Vjq1r5YwdHpe7VZAyAYdJOJCS2wKKh7yJowOBLReyF7nR+hKw4ZAXibmg0/WM6tF tcccKbNPZZDYt9han1SsiCFew/6dUNoa5Qt+Q9wiDrZ9YLqRduULMQcOZhgPqN96 E5C1+TpaWj6w8JSXU016Nd6QWocGMYt/BvvzLwbcyMEAs5LWECsMkWBtjPI4pELJ Ft4MqCEROR5Q0QgcVu4W2ePEUMz2/C7WPziCebvMvHQgvwMpCVw/10dtZrvYsp0m ofOA0HJIsw92yqPd1ZDLzTnvCt4PuBIzWeyx7bWryWfO1fZQFw8IFENoZ7xlDuba yIu1eCceri2dEHAIzlwkMtkWWaXSNN9x9w4pA2MacDHdvyCmeIPmm71TAXskITZz cse3fZb50xhstQaH5IFPw+auSW2Q1KykT/KS8+wjjwclYjnqFshjpmHEdjiRIH5r zvZwvlRQwFw5ssRxuQPWSr216MZN/SUrhGjFV6L4drsoKaPfsCwBSvC0hu+IUYuj GJNNuzxcCYeTjYyELhVXVsDIs7z8m44ZxJ0FTtjQ7dHl4FoTRIb9SceB86ylrNTp Da0MYqHb3UBq0GxGMtTLmTqfel1S7MhaI7LDha9y6F4v/TGwTtfKrcV1EEPRtL2P RaRLnuRrOC4QOqMCryPlBG4P5nusqiN225xuF5fuJCG5pJBGZWML63L2ThlsrvZ7 FZUyza7Zz5wT7FrFPlVGV+mY7p2faZ4BKtwhOIHHCJbUz/22S8jmIQdqedfhkiGb Tz/nYpN6VfJYl/aXAn/Kz1mO0ejLgPkKOcEfamA8mvu8nK0u+weSHkx08ckhuV6n ecNMOdkFWjbz2zpsaAITcz0kuG6Z5A97gMpjCXqinNIuKNlrZHKoWZzBJSlrdRX+ OCyhroVFKS2iL+V/XIqCRmnTIh4D1cCYlo/Q1VdIjsNBcoBB/uUtgNu21X+Mh3Ob wrTnCzjUBZm5Ozo9ZWbvsS5oe23KnWvsdMpwBvddFUJzafPviIm/vQJKzRS2mVvg RpOzlwwl5nfi6Q/dWO45b35O6lvRuwOPnx+v9A29pWm30CWce4XKGxoIsuCCVFfn CHhjRhqjYXAuHJTbUjAOK+1mBB+DhNMmOnkUiGR2DLZJ48lb3+a+JadALZjKdDhU Tdys2E1d8qjBTKkyHY3MV7cILyW623qLrFTtOA4DnXJzZF7zDz/pufFECDOibEkI 8IZRFViimAQHRH4rAmToihh7cQwkY3u7tKd6wl5GxP/R4deY566/8xxMzNz2/wrS PA74sh2yuuRcv9+qeKitpjY1z0B9sYPLzgBpDfCptKoaSdYRXiPXINgKCyaq84p1 o51S6xvGBbbVhe/wYnUfHgOtAWLX50etfBQ7zGe7Yy9NjCpBg/OcFPWgRMxL86un

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!

It can't be TOO human-friendly, or it will be guessable because of having a low Kolmogorov (descriptive) complexity, and then you defeat the whole point...

i can't reply directly to your post, but if you were to try guessing, well, there are ~ 52^30 possibilities. this is a big number :) our sun will be long dead before you can derive the private key

Ensuring security and ensuring I could never possibly memorize it...

There are wallets that let you do that. Eg:

"Electrum [...] allows you to recover your wallet from a secret phrase." [1]

[1] http://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet

Tattoo perhaps? Laser-printing onto contact lens? Any other ideas?

Subcutaneous RFID would be much less obtrusive and more feasible, assuming you could find a reader. And however you store it on your body, you should also encrypt it with a passphrase that you can memorize.

Maybe subcutaneous micro-sd card, with some sort of medical-grade coating? It would be a serious bitch to get out (any doctor or veterinarian could probably help you there) but once you did you wouldn't have any trouble reading it.

In stressful situations I've know people to give names other than their own (Maiden name when married for 30ish years), forget their birthdate and a host of other missteps. War is (I imagine), stressful. I wouldn't be setting up systems that that required a lot of thought if I was off to some sort of high stress environment.

The high stress environment is getting out of the country. The environment where you get an internet connection again and are in a stable enough situation to recover your wealth at your leisure is not stressful.

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.

That really depends on circumstances.

If conditions favor liquidity and portability, and your currency is stable, it's a rational choice as a value store.

Your _best_ value store is investments which grow in value. In a well-functioning economy, stocks, other investment vehicles, a business, agricultural or other productive land, etc.

Where this isn't the case, your most valuable assets are those which can protect you, support you, and/or get you to where you will be safe. If you've got value left over at this point, a convenient store that's readily convertible at your destination is best. If things aren't horribly bad, a fiat/hard currency (even bitcoin might work), gold, or other items of high but convertible value.

One argument in bitcoin's favor (and I'm not generally a fan) is that you can store immense quantities in very small physical space, or (assuming communications) transmit them elsewhere quickly. The main caveat is their utility (and value) once you're outside the trouble zone. Assuming there is an "outside the trouble zone".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com