No internet? No Problem, You can Send Bitcoin With Radio Waves

In this day and age where the internet has become a part of our lifestyle, it’s hard to imagine a world where any work can be completed without the need of an internet connection. Now, what if I tell you that the latest and one of the most advanced techs in recent times, Bitcoin can be sent even without an internet connection.

You would have your doubts, and I don’t blame you for that, but the headline is no clickbait and there has been evidential proof of people making Bitcoin transactions with the help of amateur radio waves.

When Satoshi put his Bitcoin white paper in the public domain, his vision of a decentralized network was not just limited to the freedom from the monopoly of government. But a network which does not have to be dependent on anything that is under control of the government.

Now imagine if a revolt breaks out against the central banks and people have decided to use Bitcoin to topple the banks, but the government shut down all internet supply in the region, would that make the revolters scale back? No, because there are ways using which you can send Bitcoin even in absence of an internet connection.

The whole process of setting up the Bitcoin transaction process does take time, but even when the conventional methods are taken out of the equation it is still possible to make transactions using other methodology.

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The Earliest Use of Airways For Crypto Transactions

The earliest recorded history of cryptocurrency being sent using airways was back in 2014 and the currency used for the same was Hamradiocoin, one of the earliest vanity altcoins. It is still undecided on why a radio enterprise would need a cryptocurrency. However, we are not complaining, as the use of radio waves lead to other similar experiments in the future.

The next major step in making crypto transactions over radio waves was done by the Finnish company Vertaisvaluutta.fi which proposed the creation of a P2P half-duplex CB/HAM radio cryptocurrency.

In another development, Krypto radio partnered with national broadcasters in Finland to pilot a project which would broadcast live Bitcoin transactions, blocks and currency exchange data via national DVB-T television networks in real time, but the project failed to launch its commercial run. The founder explained the reasons,

“The project raised a huge audience and there has been some serious commercial interest but nothing I am really interested in because they would destroy the original idea of Kryptoradio – distributing the Bitcoin ledger autonomously without internet connectivity.”

The recent experiment to send Bitcoin without an internet connection came in 2018 when a New Zealand based developer used a network-disconnected android phone and four portable antennas to send Bitcoins to an address 12.6 Km away entirely offline.

Another major breakthrough in recent times came in 2019 itself when the Coinkite founder Rodolfo Novak sent BTC over 600 KM from Toronto Canada to Openbazaar co-founder Sam Patterson in Michigan, USA. This incident made it clear that Bitcoin can operate even in the absence of any internet connection.

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Why Radio Wave Transmission Might Be Necessary

Internet blackouts are a common thing especially in places where the government does not enjoy much of the confidence of its citizens. Take Zimbabwe and Venezuela for example, the internet has been blocked on several occasions. So, the use of radio waves might seem like a far-fetched scenario, but we must always prepare ourselves for the worst case scenarios.

When Satoshi invented Bitcoin, his focus was to liberate the economy and finances from the clutches of the centralized authorities. Satoshi did not dream of Bitcoin to peak the trade market charts but as an entity which can be used by the developing countries to get control of their finances.

By this article, I am not trying to project the use of radio wave transmission as another mode of the transaction but as the last resort in case we face a situation where the use of radio waves becomes the only option.

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