There was a time when Great Keppel Island was sold as the ideal place to go and "get wrecked", a party island at the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. It then faded into disrepair and then into memory.

Now an ambitious cryptocurrency consortium plans to resurrect it as a high-tech wonderland including a luxury resort, private villas and apartments, a golf course, retail outlets and a marina in what is being sold as the world’s largest cryptocurrency-backed property deal.

An artist's impression of the proposed Great Keppel Island redevelopment.

If all goes to plan, they boast, when the development is complete Great Keppel will become the world’s largest island cryptocurrency micro-economy, a project that could bring the new digital economy to the bricks-and-mortar mainstream.

If you are not quite sure what that means, don’t be surprised. Even Great Keppel’s owner had to do some background reading when the proposal was first put to him.