Successful cryptocurrency investors are teaming up with Blue Frontiers and the Seasteading Institute to build a community on a man-made island in international waters. While the seasteading movement has recently seen a lot of progress in the form of developing technologies and finding a host nation for the first seastead, the movement has lacked sufficient funding to bring its vision into fruition. Blue Frontier’s ICO for its new cryptocurrency Varyon aims to solve this problem. As it turns out, cryptocurrency investors are the perfect community to back the seasteading movement and help make sovereign nations on the sea a reality.

OVERLAPPING COMMUNITIES SEEKING FREEDOM

The cryptocurrency and seasteading movements have overlapping, heavily libertarian communities. Many cryptocurrency early adopters believed so much in the tech because of the libertarian philosophy behind it. These ideological supporters see the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency as the solution to a corrupt, manipulative, and inflationary central banking system. They see the central banks of the world as fundamental pillars in an oppressive control system that prevents us from having truly free societies. And who can blame them?

Mayer Amschel Rothschild was famously quoted saying,

“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes it’s laws.”

In other words, these libertarian-minded early adopters of cryptocurrency see bitcoin and other cryptos as a truly free market currency that challenges the monopolized institution of fiat.

In the same way, the seasteading movement sees its initiative as truly free-market governance that challenges the monopolized institution of government as we know it. They view governance as an information technology that needs to be subject to the same competitive free market forces the rest of our world is built upon. To expose government to competition in this way will drive innovation, efficiency and force existing governments to provide better services to keep up.

Sadly, neither the crypto nor seasteading communities truly have the freedom to pursue their ideals on land. While it’s long been impossible to form a competitive system of governments within any countries borders, the cryptocurrency industry is just now facing increased legal pressure that threatens to slow it down.

LAND-BASED SOCIETIES ARE BLOCKING WAVES OF INNOVATION

The legal restriction of cryptocurrency by oppressive nation states is currently stifling innovation, while freedom can be found in international waters. Many developed nations, particularly the U.S., are passing harsh regulation against crypto, in some cases banning it outright. In the States, the IRS and SEC are putting pressure on the industry, forcing companies like Coinbase to report their users earnings and threatening to list cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Ripple as securities.

In countries like Russia and Thailand, Bitcoin is completely banned, whereas China and India have passed regulations so strict that the currency is practically useless. As it turns out, governments don’t like their regional monopolies on currency challenged.

As described earlier, many crypto investors supported the technology for ideological reasons, then many of them got rich. That not only reinforced and validated their beliefs but gave them the resources to further pursue their ideals. New ICOs like Blue Frontiers’ Varyon give them the opportunity to put those resources to use turning ideals into reality. That said, for Blue Frontiers and the Seasteading Institute, this is more than a fundraising mechanism. It’s a more practical platform on which to build their small-scale economy.

IN TECH WE TRUST

Cryptocurrency and blockchain are the lightweight, scalable future of governance, making them much more suitable systems for small-scale societies. Fiat currency and fractional reserve banking are far too cumbersome for a small-scale society to actually implement. One can only imagine how long and how many resources it would take to form a central bank, print currency, become recognized by foreign exchanges and distribute that currency to citizens.

In fact, dozens of small countries that exist today don’t have their own currency. Take Ecuador, El Salvador, and Micronesia for examples. They all use the U.S. dollar and, as such, have given up control of their own economies and placed it in the hands of the U.S. Federal Reserve (which is actually a private organization and not even part of the U.S Government). That clearly isn’t the best approach to achieve true sovereignty and self-reliance.

In contrast, a skilled developer can spin up and distribute a new cryptocurrency in a day. Further, the cryptocurrency would immediately allow people that are not local to the society to participate in and support its economy.

Blockchain enables small-scale societies in more ways than providing a practical solution for currency. Blockchain-based ‘smart contracts’ can dramatically reduce the overhead necessary to manage agreements, relationships, property ownership and other logistical process that government usually mediates. In a seastead this could mean that identification, the purchasing of property and labor agreements could all be handled with a bit of code rather than layers and layers of bureaucracy.

THE ‘NEW MANIFEST DESTINY’

The dream is now more real than ever. Mankind’s inevitable expansion to the sea is the new ‘manifest destiny’. For these reasons, it is clear that the cryptocurrency and seasteading communities are a perfect synergistic match whose visions will be more quickly actualized by this union. As the trend continues and cryptocurrency continues to explode in value, you can expect to see real traction in making ‘seavilization’ a reality.