Bitcoin's promise of being decentralized is a bit of a lie—it depends on a physical internet that’s super easy for governments to cut.
March 24, 2026
Original Paper
The Missing Dimension of Bitcoin Resilience: Transport Decentralization, Communications Continuity, and Monetary Reachability Under Stress
SSRN · 6440505
The Takeaway
While the software and ledger are distributed, the actual 'transport' of data depends on a few specific fiber optic cables and satellite links. This paper identifies 'monetary reachability' as a hidden bottleneck that makes Bitcoin as susceptible to physical censorship as any traditional bank.
From the abstract
Bitcoin is widely described as decentralized, censorship-resistant, and robust by design. These characterizations are substantially correct at the levels of issuance, validation, and ledger replication. They remain incomplete at the level of transport. Transactions, blocks, and node messages still depend on communications pathways that can be degraded, censored, concentrated, or disrupted. This paper argues that the next frontier of Bitcoin resilience is transport decentralization. The goal is t