[SERIOUS] How to use the Bitcoin network without an internet connection

Preface

This might seem super niche and irrelevant, but lets keep in mind that a lot of the world is still under the boot of totalitarian regimes, and that financial freedom is still an important tool for billions of people worldwide.

This might also begin to become more relevant as regimes such as China aims to lock down any use of cryptocurrencies outside of their own government controlled networks.

Countries such as Russia, Iran, India and Ethiopia has in the past already shut down their internet for their countries during periods of civil turmoil.

Being able to access the Bitcoin network without using an internet connection could prove to be vital for the freedom of billions of people now, or in the near future.

Satellite

Blockstream, a company devoted to enhancing Bitcoin’s functionality, revealed in 2017 that it had created a satellite-based BTC transfer option. The network, now known as Blockstream Satellite, distributes the BTC blockchain around-the-clock without the need for the Internet. On the ground, anyone with a modest satellite receiver can then receive the Bitcoin blockchain.

How it works:

1. Satellite Broadcast: Blockstream maintains a network of communication satellites in orbit. These satellites receive blocks of Bitcoin transactions and blockchain data from the internet.
2. Data Encoding: The received data is encoded into radio waves and transmitted back to Earth as signals.
3. User Reception: Users who have a satellite dish and a receiver system can tune in to these signals. The Blockstream Satellite signals are available across a wide coverage area, allowing users in remote or poorly connected areas to access the Bitcoin network.
4. Blockchain Synchronization: Once the signals are received, users' software processes the data, and their local copy of the Bitcoin blockchain is updated. This helps them stay in sync with the latest transactions and blocks on the network.

SMS

In a situation where using a regular internet connection, SMS messaging could still be operational and it has been proven capable of sending Bitcoin transactions.

The Samourai wallet allows users to execute Bitcoin transactions using SMS without an Internet connection.

• As each SMS must be less than 160 characters, transactional information is split between multiple messages and then reassembled at the receiver.
• The SMS service was developed specifically for those struggling with Bitcoin censorship.

There also exists various projects that aim to bring the Bitcoin L2, Lightning Network to poorer African countries, with the hopes of helping to provide censorship resistant transfers in remote areas where internet connectivity is not a given.

Honorable mentions for SMS tx includes: Pony Direct and SMSPushTX

Radio

Last, but not least we have radiowave technology. This method has been proven to work as a method for accessing the Bitcoin network, however it seems more of a can we do it, rather than a should we do it project.

In 2019, two BTC engineers used radio waves and Bitcoin’s layer 2 Lightning Network to exchange BTC over a 4000km distance. The transaction was sent from Rodolfo Novak, Co-Founder of CoinKite in Toronto, to Elaine Ou, a Bloomberg journalist in San Francisco. Although time-consuming, Bitcoin can be sent and received using a meshed radio network to anyone with an appropriate antenna. 

Conclusion

As previously mentioned, this sounds super niche and hardly relevant for our current path of progress in blockchain technology, but in the bigger picture, there's a good argument for focusing on bringing tried and true blockchain projects to the parts of the world where censorship resistance still plays a vital role.

There's also no way of excluding an event where we could find ourselves in need of such services in the future, considering the increasing likelyhood of digital censorship from governments or in the event of foreign attacks on our internet infrastructure.