I didn't bring my lunch into work yesterday and I was beyond starving. Without a car, and far from home, the only place nearby is Whole Foods. I walked to the front of the store and they told me "Sir I am sorry all we can accept now is cash". The first thing I thought is wow, Whole Foods has been trying to push us to go cashless for the past 5 years, making it an inconvenience to pay cash, and trying to get us to pay with our palm - and now they say this is the only payment they accept???
There is a Chase bank nearby, and given how hungry I was I walked to the bank to withdraw some cash. Once I walk into the branch several of the tellers bark at me telling me that I am unable to withdraw funds from the ATMs inside the branch, or through the tellers directly because they don't have access to their systems. They did tell me I could go "Walk Through the Drivethrough" which I did, I'm starving.
Here I am standing in the 115-degree Phoenix desert sun, walking through a drive-through in a long line trying to get cash so I can buy a snack. I try to withdraw $500 like I normally do, and I receive an error (keep in mind there is a line of 10 people standing in the sun - so I go through the entire process again). I can withdraw $100, even though my account is well funded with cuck bucks.
I came to realize what I just went through is what people in Argentina, Lebanon, Venezuela, Cuba, and many other socialist nations went through. We are all one event away from having access to our rations with the permission of our banking system. Not being able to withdraw your full balance at any time is a huge problem, and things like this will erode trust in our banking system - even the normies in line saw it yesterday.
Whole Foods and other stores that experience this outage don't accept Bitcoin (I've tried several times). In a situation like this, I think we need to be honest that we are still completely dependent on the permissioned fiat system especially if you live in most parts of the U.S. This one failure by Crowdstrike moved a lot of the world to its knees as they didn't know how to operate without their systems. While I am grateful to be in Bitcoin, what can bitcoiners do to still exchange value for goods - especially when all of the companies will not accept? The Bitcoin network was up, but still, everyone I spoke to still wanted fiat. What are your thoughts on the situation from yesterday, and what can be done to have redundancies to always have the option to pay in Bitcoin? While I am grateful to have access to $100, and healthy food - many of us still tethered to the fiat world are very close to starvation if all systems go down.
ATM I couldn't withdraw $500 (Only $100)
All digital kiosks closed (Cash Payment Through Register Only)
Seven Hours Later In A Different Part of the Phoenix Valley