Could Bitcoin survive without the internet?

Yes—but only in a degraded, fractured form.

Bitcoin doesn’t strictly need the commercial internet, but it does need some way for nodes to communicate globally. If the internet went down, Bitcoin could still move transactions through satellites, radio links, mesh networks, or physical transfer of signed data. People could keep sending and receiving coins, just more slowly and less reliably.

The big problem is consensus. Bitcoin depends on the whole network agreeing on one transaction history. Without a shared global network, the system would split into regional islands. Each one could keep mining, but they’d likely form separate, incompatible chains. If those regions reconnected later, some history could be overwritten by whichever chain had the most proof-of-work.

Bottom line: Bitcoin could survive a temporary or local internet outage. Without the internet long term, it would probably stop being one global currency and become a set of isolated regional versions.