With the advent of Blockstream Satellite and widely broadcasted, passively-receivable Bitcoin data, a new era of Bitcoin adoption can occur. Areas without access to fast broadband connections can now trustlessly verify Bitcoin blocks and transactions, and receive BTC discreetly with common cheap hardware. With the Satellite API, those same areas can now receive arbitrary data — current market data, private messages, and data from exciting new use cases not thought of yet. All free. The broadcasts are free and the software is free with code available for auditing and improvement by the community.

For the first time, most of the planet’s population can receive bitcoin using their own fully validating nodes without expensive data plans. But how do they send bitcoin? There are a few cheap and accessible ways to do so. Transactions can be broadcasted via SMS, by mesh networking devices, and even sneakernet (simply transporting the signed raw transaction data on a flash drive or printed QR code).

GoTenna sells a simple to use mesh networking device, which along with a piece of software called TxTenna can broadcast Bitcoin transactions to a local mesh network of GoTennas. There is also growing interest and work being done on LoRaWAN — a similar mesh networking technology.

With this hardware setup, anyone can send and receive bitcoin without an internet connection. It’s resistant to network outages and can also maintain uptime through power outages since all of the hardware is run off batteries. The hardware can of course be run off of gasoline generators or solar panels if the power outage is longer lasting.