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Bitcoin is going from strength to strength and new micro-nations are struggling to be
established. Is it really possible to set up your own currency, or your own country?

Money Markets By Clem Chambers

CRYPTO-CURRENCIES “another
pseudo-micro-
nation”
TAKE TO TERRITORY
LIKE MICRO-NATIONS
IT’S ALL about territory. For a Thames estuary as in a lacuna
country the territory is land. For of the old and new UK territorial
a crypto-currency it will soon be sea limits. It declared itself
about the size of the ‘blockchain’ independent in years past and
– the numeric string of the about the time of the dot.com
transaction registry that bubble decided it could be an
validates a Bitcoin. offshore super-secure server
While Bitcoin miners extract centre which would protect
new Bitcoins with homebrew anarchic Internet enterprises
supercomputers, the spine of with its near-sovereign
Bitcoin, its blockchain, immunity and/or its
threatens to void itself by remoteness.
growing like a germ to infinite This didn’t pan out, which
proportions. was probably good luck in the
It seems that to get a new long run for the Sealanders, elsewhere, you can make money minted by the printing press; it
technology craze going it first given that the founder of Silk from that and you will pay a cut has to be mined like gold.
has to be christened with a Road has recently been to the place hosting you. This is Seborga, one of the truly
misnomer. A new technology sentenced to spend the rest of the business model of all tax practical para-nations, has
misnomer might be a powerful his life in a US jail for offering havens. However, you could also taken a more sensible route. It
force as it enables people to just that kind of service. end up extradited to the US in an was founded by ‘His
imagine what the technology It is probably easier to set up orange suit. So, if you are a Tremendousness’ Prince
could become, rather than bind a pseudo-micro-nation than a micro-nation, legit or otherwise, Giorgio I of Seborga. Rather
its possibilities in the mind with Bitcoin account. All you have the strength of your lacuna is than offer crypto-currencies or
concrete accuracy. to do is say you are a prince and quite important. special services it has decided to
An early example for me was claim the relevant lands you Liberland is another pseudo- offer great pasta and wonderful
‘multimedia’. Tying together a see fit as yours to reign over. micro-nation also stuck between views down to the sea and to
scrapbook of different content, However, it does help to be in a Croatia and Serbia; another Monaco. Like Disney’s magic
music, text, images, video and lacuna to create a never-ever- Venn diagrammatic sovereignty kingdom near Paris, founded by
the like into one seamless media land. A lacuna is a vacuum of malfunction. It is 3km2, bigger King Mickey the First, everyone
seemed uni-media to me, but the definition made perhaps by a than marquee micro-nation agrees it’s a fun place to visit
‘multimedia’ description lack of activity or the creation Monaco. without having to consider
grabbed the imagination. And if of a new configuration space. Monaco, like most of the other weighty libertarian ideas,
‘client-server’ fails to set the That is how Sealand found its real micro-nations, actually digital wallets or extradition
pulse racing, why not niche and it is also how Enclava has a chair at the UN. Its special treaties.
contemplate ‘the Cloud’? got its kick start. situation has a long history, It’s a small world after all.
It is no wonder then that The Kingdom of Enclava is a normally pivoting around war, Nation-building realities
crypto-currencies are not new start up micro-pseudo- and unlike the pretenders, mean that the key problem faced
currencies at all. To be a anarcho-crypto-micro-nation. It it has the full power of by wannabe countries is that no
currency, a medium of is on the Croat-Serb border, internationally acknowledged one is going to let them establish
commerce must be issued by a claimed by Slovenia, and is not sovereignty behind it. On themselves.
state. A Visa card is not a desired enough to restart the the other hand, Croatia has Conversely, the money of
currency, nor are your air miles savage Yugoslavian civil war. cordoned off Liberland and choice, Bitcoin, has the opposite
or your luncheon vouchers. Some 5,000 people have taken up is actively baulking any problem; its size is growing too
Holding currency and being honorary citizenship. The attempt to colonise it. fast. The ‘blockchain’, a ledger
currency are not the same. country’s planned currency is Meanwhile, the men who of transaction critical to its
So a crypto-currency like Dogecoin, the joke pseudo- would be king in Liberland plan existence, is growing
Bitcoin (which is also not a coin) money that suddenly became to use Bitcoin as their currency. exponentially. The Bitcoin
would be better called a pseudo- much more serious when it Yet using a crypto-currency as ledger is already unwieldy and
currency, or a para-currency. became worth something. your country’s cash has major its growth threatens to grind its
Therefore it is perhaps not a If you can suspend someone drawbacks, all political/ monetary system to a halt.
surprise that the micro- and else’s sovereignty, you can economic. Greece is finding as I Yet virtual money driven by
pseudo-nations that sprinkle the suspend law, and if you can write that if you can’t print your encryption has only just begun
globe are very interested in suspend law, you can make currency in times of need, you its evolution, and its impact on
anarcho-money. money from what is called can find yourselves snookered. individual sovereignty may yet
Sealand is probably the most regulatory arbitrage. Nothing beats debasing a allow people to engineer, build
famous of the crypto-pseudo- Regulatory arbitrage sounds national currency when you and live in virtual meta-nations.
anarcho-micro-nations. It’s a grand but it simply means that need to weasel out of a fiscal The only question is: can we
WW2 gun platform sitting not so if you can do what you like in problem. You can’t debase a find a misnomer to launch one
much in a lagoon near the one place when you can’t crypto-currency. It can’t be of those?

www.EandTmagazine.com July 2015 Engineering & Technology

C2201_R20824_News_17.BK.indd 17 12/06/2015 12:57