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Coders Used Ham Radio To Send Bitcoin From Canada To San Francisco (coindesk.com)
"In what appears to be a first-of-its-kind transaction, two developers working in separate countries have successfully sent a bitcoin lightning payment over radio waves," writes CoinBase.
An anonymous reader quotes their report: The completed payment effectively moved real bitcoin from Toronto, Canada, to San Francisco, California... But sending bitcoin over radio isn't just fun. Some researchers argue it actually has a necessary use case... The idea is that, while the internet can potentially be censored, it's not the only form of technology that can be used to send data from one part of the world to another, "in case China decides to censor bitcoin via the Great Firewall, or places like North Korea where there is no internet at all," as Bloomberg columnist Elaine Ou put it in an email to CoinDesk.
Technology infrastructure startup Blockstream licensed satellites that beam bitcoin to users around the world for similar reasons.
An anonymous reader quotes their report: The completed payment effectively moved real bitcoin from Toronto, Canada, to San Francisco, California... But sending bitcoin over radio isn't just fun. Some researchers argue it actually has a necessary use case... The idea is that, while the internet can potentially be censored, it's not the only form of technology that can be used to send data from one part of the world to another, "in case China decides to censor bitcoin via the Great Firewall, or places like North Korea where there is no internet at all," as Bloomberg columnist Elaine Ou put it in an email to CoinDesk.
Technology infrastructure startup Blockstream licensed satellites that beam bitcoin to users around the world for similar reasons.
"But sending bitcoin over radio isn’t just fun. Some researchers argue it actually has a necessary use case." Fun it may be, even 'necessary', but sorry, it isn't legal. FCC rules (97.3) forbid using amateur radio for pecuniary interests. Probably illegal in Canada and most other countries too.
US Hams aren't allowed to conduct business with their amateur licenses. They can sell ham gear, but it's not for advertising or other business like activities.
I sending bitcoin via amateur radio actually legal? Probably not. Does exporting money over international boundaries violate US Treasury Dept rules? Maybe.
While an interesting proof-of-concept, there are also RFCs involving data-over-carrier-pigeons, and other slower than electricity methods, like mail.
Nice headline, but otherwise contextually meaningless in international bitcoin transactions.
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