Since its creation, people have searched for a “use case” for Bitcoin.
It seems the world has no use for money that you can send to anybody, anywhere, anytime, in any amount, without restriction, without revealing your sensitive personal information, without putting your property in another person’s control, with certainty that your transaction will go through and confirmation that every payment you receive is authentic and valid.
Nor do they care about having a way to conduct finance that works in all conditions, even when counterparties fail, without political violence, military coercion, government manipulation, or sovereign debt.
Fine.
Did they ever stop to think about what would happen after nuclear war destroys the financial and monetary infrastructure of legacy governments?
I did!
While your government’s currency won’t work after the nuclear holocaust (assuming your government is even around), Bitcoin will.
It’s a computer protocol. Nuclear war can’t destroy it.
In fact, once people recover the capacity to use computers, mint coins, and print paper, they might find it easier to adopt Bitcoin rather than rebuild their old financial systems.
(In our hypothetical scenario, those “old” financial systems refer to our current financial systems.)
Today’s financial systems cost billions of dollars and require extensive experience and operational savvy. They need regulators, courts, lawyers, compliance departments, clearinghouses, accountants, settlement companies, brokers, traders, power companies, cybersecurity experts, and a whole legal and regulatory apparatus.
With Bitcoin, you just need to plug in a device.
Which is easier to do after a nuclear war?
Available as a collectible NFT on Mirror.
Mark Helfman publishes the Crypto is Easy newsletter. He is also the author of three books and a top Bitcoin writer on Medium and Hacker Noon. Learn more about him in his bio and connect with him on Tealfeed.
