Today I was wondering, what happens if the internet gets shut down?
You wouldn't be able to buy your bread with a non-active Coinbase card or cold-wallet sitting under your mattress..
Now we must ask ourselves: how would the internet get shut down?
There actually several (unlikely) possibilities that could result in this tragic event:
The nation's power grid gets successfully attacked. It's pretty self-evident that no electricity means no internet. This would also mean no traffic control, lights, electric heating, etc. so there might be bigger problems than your bitcoin, but oh well.
Infrastructure. The internet also relies on physical infrastructure like subsea-cables, fiber cables, etc. If these were to be cut or damaged by criminals or natural disasters, this could yield major problems.
Government decision. Authoritarian governments can for example block all internet access to the citizens to prevent/oppose a revolution. This has happened during the Arab Spring in Egypt as well as in Congo during periods of unrest. It is also widely-known that internet-restriction in countries like China is strong.
Hijacking BGP. Border Gate Patrol (BGP) is used to route traffic on the internet. There have already been several attacks on the BGP, for example in 2019 when large amounts of data were rerouted to servers in China. Being able to rerout the internet can thus break the internet.
Although the internet is a very strong and resilient system, it is not invincible and therefore cryptocurrencies are not invincible. Therefore it might be wise to not have 100% of your wealth in crypto.
I would love to hear more ideas of the internet being shut down or possible solutions!
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