Just a regular morning
Yesterday morning on my way to work I needed to stop for gas. Regular enough as that is something I need to do usually a couple of times a week due to my longer commute time. The attendant at the gas station was outside putting up signs on each pump.
"Cash only accepted in store." It was not my concern as I was just going to pay a the pump with my debit card. One minute later it was my concern. The debit transaction failed. I try to keep cash in my wallet so I went into the store to pay for some gas.
At this point the attendant, who was frazzled by this obvious hit to his business came into the store to help me out. He asked me "is the debit not working on the pumps either?" I shook my head... "You know, this is probably happening everywhere in the city," he added.
I nodded and thanked him as I went out to pump my gas. It was early in the morning and now I am late for work... I didn't really care about the span of debit issues.
When I got to work, my co-worker told me that his wife's phone was not working... and then another told a similar story.
Soon enough we were hearing the reports on the radio that the Rogers network was down. To put this in perspective for non-Canadians... Rogers is the biggest cell phone / internet provider in the country.
Rogers network was down for the entire business day and long into the evening.
Most businesses had to resort to "cash only" as debit transactions relied on the rogers network. Government services shut down in a lot of instances due to lack of internet. One bank's debit cards worked (out of the big 5) and credit cards in some locations were still able to process.
Utter dependance
This incident exposed a serious flaw in the way an entire nation operates. Huge media conglomerates (Rogers, Telus, Bell) control virtually all cell phone and internet in the nation. Banks relied on these same companies to provide their services... as does the government.
One company has a problem with their network and a nation of 30+million people grinds to a screeching halt.
Blockchain and decentralization
The big elephant in the room is that a single point of failure set an entire nation into a state of turmoil. No, there were no riots. Most businesses were able to stay open... but most people were inconvenienced and most businesses suffered.
Decentralized currencies would have faired much better. Those on the Rogers network would be out of luck... I was able to transact on all blockchains yesterday with no issue. This is because there is not ONE SINGLE POINT of FAILURE.
In a decentralized structure, Rogers network would simply be one node of many nodes. If that node fails another node would seamlessly take its place.
Bitcoin had no issues yesterday, Hive had no issues yesterday... yet most people in Canada had trouble spending money yesterday.
Conclusion
It wasn't the end of the world. Nobody died from this. The incident simply points out the fact that a world whose infrastructure relies so heavily on hugely powerful centralized entities is in trouble. Even if the powers that be do not want to see decentralization, as failures such as this continue to pop up and effect large amount of the population, decentralization is the obvious solution and it is only a matter of time before it is the norm.
I look forward to your comments.