I mean, it kinds seems inevitable to me. Books has become e-books. Cash is becoming digital transfers. China has done it. The west is mostly doing card-swipes. One day, that transition will be complete, and cash would be phased out.

What happens then? Think like the power outage in Spain recently. Some people had cash. But in 20-40 years. There might not even be any cash in existence. What then?

What if, instead of a few hours, its a few days? Or weeks?

I guess riots break out all around the world?

(Seriously, has none of the politicians ever thought about this? Where are the backups? Are we just going full “YOLO” on the reliance on the power grid?)

  • explodicle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    That’s a little bit easier because they’d “only” need a satellite dish and battery backup. It’s less dependent on local infrastructure.

    • scratsearcher 🔍🔮📊🎲@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      2·
      3 hours ago

      Interesting did not think about it that way.

      • that satellite dish will eat a lot of energy for bidirectional communications, starlink requires as much as a refrigerator, if I recall correctly
      • maintaining that satellite network is quite energy intensive, but requires non local infrastructure
      • explodicle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        57 minutes ago

        Right now it’s mostly unidirectional. There’s a satellite constantly broadcasting the blockchain, and if you want to publish a transaction you need to get it back to civilization somehow. So isolated communities would need payment channels with really slow (weeks) settlements.

        You can use Starlink too but yeah like you said that’s not cheap or easy.