Bitcoin Forum

If Bitcoin was adopted by a country as an official currency, could the Bitcoin network handle it?

Right now, if some small island nation such as Nauru or Palau adopts it, I think it could be handled without any major issues.

so we can make a sell off and then buy in this whole country? ;D

There was an idea on the forums to buy an island and declare it a BTC republic. Some of them cost just a few mil $.

Ha, that would be great. Some of these Bitcoin millionaires should club together and buy their own.

Don't think so. Too much of a hassle.

And they are really affordable. Just check this out http://www.privateislandsonline.com/islands/nanuya-island-resort (http://www.privateislandsonline.com/islands/nanuya-island-resort)

Imagine creating a BTC only town on one of those islands, with some hotels and bungalows for rent. People would go there just to check out the one and only BTC banana republic  :D

Sure, quite easily.

The main gov website would probably do most transactions tho, and the block chain would be used sparingly.

An artificial island nation would be the go - some BTC billionaires could seriously afford this now.

Wow. Peeps should actually do this. As long as you can turn it into your own sovereign nation and have Bitcoin as it's currency this would be a great idea. I bet you'd make your money back if you built hotels/property on it. Imagine all the free publicity you would get as the media would be all over this.

some cost even less.

i'd be down for donating to buy one, as long as the 'laws' of the republic would be good enough. (altough i don't have that much money)

the cheapest i know of right now is close to canada (but still in the USA) on the eastcoast for  just $40,000, it's just 1 acres though.

I think the best thing would be buy a nice cheap island in a nice climate area and just build some hotels and stuff on it for tourists (just don't build too much because you want to preserve nature), maybe even make some kind of 'open zoo' from the island, as long as you don't mess up the ecosystem too much of course (even better if there's already enough wildlife to begin with).

you could rent out the hotel rooms for bitcoin. (or have a more luxury villa on it instead of a hotel).

maybe we should make a kickstarter for this shit.

How could you do this if you had the money? Are these islands completely free from the gov?

YOu'd have 3 main problems:

1. Declaring a sovereign nation just doesn't happen that easily anymore, every land on the planet is claimed.
2. Even if you buy an island, the government in which you reside under will still tax you to hell might as well just live in the city or countryside.
3. If bitcoin is rejected by governments and made illegal in the future, you run the risk of being labelled as terrorists and then the drone strikes on your island begin ;D

It would be much easier to get a country like in the bahamas or the pacific to adopt bitcoin as their official currency, then migrate and live there.

Doable but the block size must be increased. 7 transactions per second is not enough.

There are many countries where you can have a lot of freedom, especially if you're willing to help the population. Imagine moving to an island on the Pacific, somewhere near Indonesia or New Guinea. My wild guess is that their governments would greet such investor with open arms, especially with a lot of bitcoiners involved in charity. Of course you'd have to pay taxes but my guess is they woud give you a lot of freedom to accept only BTC on your island and do what you like, as long as you pay.

Anything can be bought if you have the right amount of money  ;), but yes, it's very hard to create your own nation. I guess it needs to be for obvious reasons. If you piss America or Britain off I'm sure they'd be over there in a jiffy to blast you out of existence, but as a libertarian I do love the idea of Bitcoinland.

Can BTC replace fiat currency altogether in a country, if that is what they wanted?

7 transaction limit per second means, there is a limit on the amount of economic activity BTC can support.  Based on my calculations, BTC cannot replace FIAT in G20 countries (20 countries with the largest GDP).

It cannot do so for those countries with large populations either, regardless how rich/poor they are. (It goes without saying that it wont work if the infrastructure is not there which leaves out all the poor countries).

The largest country/economy where BTC would work may be those like Norway, Sweden.

Where this would make most sense? It would be for countries like Argentine, Ecuador, Cuba where the national currency is not really trustworthy and where they have a sufficient degree of computer/network infrastructure.

buying up a private island is cheap.

constructing buildings, residences, utilities, power generation.. that is the lengthy and costly part

you can buy islands that come with residences as well.

but if you want an island that can function as an actual nation, rather than a holiday resort, it may get pretty expensive.

The current network does 7tps. , thats 7 transactions per second , and it comes to around 600000 /day.
Now , if a country bigger than Luxembourg would rely on the current bitcoin network , we would have a major problem.
People will be dealing in back alleys in fiat because they can't get their transactions done with bitcoin :)

I see it's worth 13,000,000,000 USD.

that would probably buy a small island off edinburgh, but not much more.  :P

A resort would be enough, I guess. At least to begin with. It would show the world how popular the whole BTC idea is and that we can function without the traditional banking system.

Or the government could issue an official alt coin for use in the country.

Lol, the question wasn't about solutions , the question was if the actual BITCOIN network can deal with it.
It we talk about solutions , then we can release the limit on the block size , prune the blockchain and here we go.

This has been dealt with many times now. It is not possible to build an artificial island in the neutral parts of the ocean, according to the international laws. And if you build one inside some nation's EEZ, then it'll be under the jurisdiction of that country.

As a president of a country would you take a country 'all in' on Bitcoin?
It would be a pretty risky gamble... think of the children.
But a new country 'Bitcoin Island' would be cool..

Yes it has been dealt with many times, here and elsewhere - but it is actually entirely possible.

What is stopping someone building it in sovereign ocean, and then setting off to neutral ocean when ready?

It won't be under that nation's EEZ once you leave and then apply to become your own nation.

It's the same thing. You can even built it on a mountain and then make it float in international waters.
There are pacts between countries to deal with such thing, no one will recognize it , and also , you're risking somebody to take over it in order to "govern it for the good of the people" and to ensure democracy.
Most likely under an UN mission.

You can make a sovereign nation if you have enuff military/economic power, that's all.

This reminds me how american soldiers were spreading democracy in Vietnam and Iraq.

yeah right . bitcoins could not support a small neighborhood let alone a country . Very few people in general have the patience to even try and buy one  . No one . It is a novelty and serious shopping will never be made with it . It is the hardest most time consuming bunch of BS I ever encountered just trying to obtain a legal product . Opening many accounts and giving information to them that most of the people would never do and waiting days or more to get verified and waiting who knows how long after that before you can even buy any coins and all the other irritating crap .
the average person is going to use their credit card or cash both readily available in seconds not a month .

 Besides . Just wait . the good old USA is going to find a way to stomp all over this stuff soon . If they can not get their grubby hands on 40 or 50% of your bitcoins by taxing you they will shut this down somehow or at least put in so many regulations that you will not be able to do anything without a team of lawyers .

I Can't quite find the source right now (a bit lazy), but there's an entire town in Chile that will only be workign with bitcoins as their currency.  Lots of rich people bought a gigantic area and will work mainly with BTC as a form of payment.  Read this on the news I believe a few weeks ago.

that is a town that will last about a minute . the price of coins could drop to 100 or less in an instant and the great depression will ruin them . Anyone holding their savings in bitcoin would be on the welfare line .
 the USA gov is going to find a way to put a stick in the spokes of this bike and flip it . they will keep illegally going after domain names and busting sites like silk road by way of busting their employees that will snitch and other tactics and all that cracks the confidence of bitcoin holders .
 bitcoin is for playing with to make some quick cash or just have a good time and for buying illegal products on Tor end of story

This makes no sense.  First of all, it's in Chile, so US governemnt doesn't have much say about what they can, and can not do...  Second of all, why would the price drop to 100?

You got all of this figured out. US government will hunt down BTC users around the world or hire hackers to take down their websites. Weren't they supposed to do that with Wikileaks or Piratebay years ago?

How long does it take to get verified for a credit card? It takes just as long to sign up for one of them, if not longer. Don't use crappy exchanges if you don't like all the faff. You can buy coins from these forum easily and without any ID. And just because you can't seem to get a hold of coins easily doesn’t mean the rest of us can't. I got my first coins pretty easily off ebay. Paid for them with Paypal and had them within 10-30 minutes. Bitcoin isn't a novelty, and serious shopping can already be done with it, and this will likely grow steadily during 2014.

How about you try to remember cause I read the news daily and haven't heard of anything like that lately.
And this would be some really big news!

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-chilean-libertarian-paradise/

"A libertarian-fashioned community in Chile is now accepting bitcoins in exchange for plots of land within its boundaries."

And the difference between working for bitcoins only , paying with bitcoins , living on bitcoins , an entire town doing this , the gigantic area which he was talking about and the 250 acres that are being sold mainly for $ , is making me believe bitcoinpsftp was talking about something totally different.
Or he was half asleep when he read those news.

It was probably exaggerated by the media, or he was half-asleep  :D.

It would be pretty cool to buy some land and make a community with like-minded libertarians for Bitcoin though.