Hello everyone, greetings and respect, I have just implemented a bitcoin BTC payment system in my small community with cold wallets but not all of them are young with internet access. Many of them have expressed their concern to me. It all comes down to how can I transfer bitcoin payments to you without internet?
I do not know if this possibility had been discussed before in this wonderful forum. But I need your help to see if all together we can achieve this.
The only way I know that you can transfer bitcoin without the internet is with a physical device such as an Opendime or this new SatsCard product that is being released. Both are by CoinKite but they both require a certain level of trust.
Another way that you can transact with bitcoin but not on-chain is with networked lightning nodes. They can be networked with either a mesh network for greater distances or hardwired for short distances but you would still need internet to be able to open and close channels.
There is a group of bitcoiners in Berlin who are using lightning offline with a city mesh network (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk) to transact amongst each other without being connected to the internet. The lightning nodes only need to be able to communicate with each other directly to update the state of the channels. When either party wants to close or open a new channel, they would need an internet connection but since you mentioned not everyone in your community has internet access, this could be part of your solution.