Anonymous B joined in and replied with this 1 year ago, 17 minutes later[^][v]#1,305,926
Local Fiat Currency - Immediately useful, but only for a few days. Trust in system will rapidly erode, making this nearly worthless
Bitcoin - Useful longer term, depending on the extent of societal collapse. If Internet is down AND radio communications are interrupted in an EMP event, this may not be immediately useful. It will be easier to defend, however. There will be others trying to protect to network, there are satellites and dense radio networks in many locations on earth you can use to communicate with the bitcoin network. You can transact with bitcoin off-chain but this could risky if you aren't able to receive recent on-chain block data.
Gold bars / Doubloons - Gold is heavy. You have to physically transport it, and will become a target for theft as soon as you start trading with it. You can't defend it in your sleep. You will be laden with heavy gold during every trade
Canned food - Immediately useful. Has some of the negative properties of gold bars, but you can use these to help yourself survive and wait out some of the chaos.
Warm clothes - Immediately useful, similar to canned food but many other people will already have these in the moment the shit hits the fan. Warm clothes will appreciate in value during a societal collapse scenario, until such a time that it can be produced again. This goes for canned food as well.
Anonymous E joined in and replied with this 1 year ago, 6 minutes later, 38 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,305,937
@1,305,926 (B)
Is Bitcoin really that useful? I am sceptical. The only people who would really be interested in that is other crypto people. Even today, where most people in society are safe and we all have easy access to the Internet, it hasn't really taken off and gone mainstream.
So if a societal collapse has gotten to the point that fiat currency starts falling out of use and we go back to bartering, I think that nobody is going to care about virtual currency. And I doubt that everyone will have easy access to the Internet in such a collapse either. I don't have anything against it but I don't think it could operate outside of the peaceful society we have.
Anonymous B replied with this 1 year ago, 1 minute later, 40 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,305,938
@1,305,929 (C)
Yes. You may not be able to transact across long distances using bitcoin during an EMP event, I counted that as a reason it may not be as useful in the immediate aftermath
Anonymous B replied with this 1 year ago, 20 seconds later, 44 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,305,943
@1,305,937 (E)
There are many projects that are making the bitcoin network more rugged against these kinds of threats. It gets better every day, consider educating yourself on the progress:)
Anonymous E replied with this 1 year ago, 9 minutes later, 54 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,305,952
@1,305,943 (B)
Okay sure, they're trying to make it more durable if there's an EMP attack or something. Good stuff, but none of my points were about the Internet dying off and the Bitcoin becoming inaccessible. If there's some apocalyptic event in the next few months, maybe I could hypothetically access my Bitcoin wallet if I got some Internet somewhere but nobody around me is going to care about my Bitcoin it if they're struggling to find food.
I think this is like saying that having lots of high-value stocks would be good in an apocalypse. Yes it makes you very wealthy in our society now but their value is contingent with society being stable and people placing value on intangible assets.
Anonymous B replied with this 1 year ago, 3 minutes later, 58 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,305,954
@previous (E)
The difference is a stock portfolio's value is contingent on this particular current society being stable, but bitcoin's value can carry on given that some form of society continues or emerges from the instability
Anonymous E replied with this 1 year ago, 3 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,305,956
This is mildly interesting, though. I'm sure there's information out there about what kinds of things happen to a currency and an economy when there's some kind of societal collapse, but I'm not immediately finding anything.
I'd speculate that things revert to bartering, but fiat currency stays around to some extent as people hope for better times.
Anonymous A (OP) replied with this 1 year ago, 3 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,305,959
For what it's worth, in my opinion canned food would be the most valuable asset, followed by warm clothes (which would increase in value as time goes on and previously manufactured clothes wear out). Gold bars or jewelry would be next most valuable, followed by fiat and bitcoin. Towards the start, fiat would be more valued but as time goes on bitcoin would go ahead of it as it would be more stable over long distance.
I think that they're a valid option that I didn't consider; many pharmaceuticals have a short expiry life though so they wouldn't be good for stockpiling.
Edit - I think gold or gems will hold value because during societal collapses of the past they have endured while being used for that purpose.
Anonymous B replied with this 1 year ago, 5 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,305,970
@previous (A)
Expired pharmaceuticals aren't useless though, they just become less effective. You could cycle through your stockpile, selling some of it as it gets closer to expiry and buying more to replace. Then when the SHTF you have probably 2 or 3 years in which you can trade using it. If you aren't kind of set up 3+ years into the societal collapse event, you're probably not going to make it.
So they're in a class of goods including things like gasoline or fresh food. High value but short shelf life, which means that they're good for barter in the short term but aren't useful after a set time period.
You could also stockpile bullets, socks/shoes, tableware, cigarettes, lightbulbs and toothpaste. Those are pretty portable and last a while, so you could save up a warehouse worth if you like.
Anonymous E replied with this 1 year ago, 19 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,306,011
@1,305,973 (dw !p9hU6ckyqw)
Yeah I'm honestly really confused. We live in prosperous information age societies and crypto currency is still very niche, an apocalypse would not make it more accessible and popular.
And, like, it's also extremely volatile, its value fluctuates all the time. We can barely agree on what 1 Bitcoin is now, imagine trying to establish that with a stranger in an apocalypse when the Internet and the websites that track that stuff are gone.
> Is Bitcoin really that useful? I am sceptical. The only people who would really be interested in that is other crypto people. Even today, where most people in society are safe and we all have easy access to the Internet, it hasn't really taken off and gone mainstream.
That's a tautology is "crypto people" means anyone who uses crypto. Anyone who likes money might use bitcoin. Keeping the transaction private, or trading with someone who isn't physically near you makes it useful.
It has gone mainstream already, there are bitcoin ATMs in stores and one country made it official currency.
> So if a societal collapse has gotten to the point that fiat currency starts falling out of use and we go back to bartering
Bartering is very inefficient because people don't always have what the other person wants. It also makes it hard to quantify the current price of a good.
> I doubt that everyone will have easy access to the Internet in such a collapse either.
There's starlink, and there's mesh networks that anyone can set up easily.
> Bartering is very inefficient because people don't always have what the other person wants. It also makes it hard to quantify the current price of a good.
"8 chickens?? Wait just a minute, yesterday it was 2 chickens!"
> The blockchain data was in line with the authors’ survey results: transactions peaked around the time of the country’s adoption of Bitcoin and then decreased significantly.
Anyway I think I've made my points about crypto so I'm gonna leave it there. But hey, if society does collapse and Bitcoin takes off, I guess I shall look very silly.
Anonymous E double-posted this 1 year ago, 20 minutes later, 4 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,306,030
I am quite curious about what would happen to currency in an apocalypse-type scenario. I know that ancient people would sometimes put coins into hordes during societal collapses, but their coins were made of precious metals so had intrinsic value.
I made a few brief attempts to Google if there's any data on what happens to a fiat currency in scenarios like this, but there's a lot of noise to cut through. If there's hard data then I'm not seeing it.
Anonymous B replied with this 1 year ago, 29 seconds later, 4 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,306,031
@1,306,023 (E)
It's silly to take care of your collapse prep before you've taken care of your non-collapse prep. Societal collapse is just one scenario where it might make sense to have some bitcoin. Hyperinflation could also happen tomorrow. What if your government prints a trillion quadrillion dollars? That's likely to happen ahead of a collapse anyway, may as well get some bitcoin