Bitcoin Forum

Several threads have entertained the notion of an island community build around a Bitcoin economy.  This project might be of interest:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ueui4/question_about_very_large_bitcoin_transactions/

They should just use Bitcoin as holder of value, but calculate prices in whatever local currency is mostly used around that island.

Something that most people selling something for BTC anyways already do - e.g. selling one GPU for BTC that are ~100 USD worth. If this then ends up being 1 BTC, 100 BTC or 0.0001 BTC is kinda irrelevant.

Pure BTC pricing ("1 liter milk = 0.1 BTC, no matter how much they pay for 1 BTC on MtGox!") might emerge from that later when a bigger local economy is built and people are used to using BTC.

It would definitely help, as it might be easier to get BTC than whatever funny money might be locally used near that island, depending on location - and definitely cheaper to transfer that money.
The idea of creating an alternate local blockchain though might also be something to be considered - these islandcoins then would be bought for BTC and could even have a fixed 1:1 valuation, but it could be with faster blocks and some trust to a central authority for block generation (but then without fees). If anyone doesn't trust this authority, it would be possible to still pay in BTC or convert islandcoins to BTC, but there might be fees on the BTC <--> BTC transactions and they might take more time to confirm.

A local alt-chain could also eliminate blockchain spam (when buying a bubble gum at the counter) but it would still be easy to convert any USD to islandcoins: Buy BTC, send them to the islandcoin exchange (depending on design this might even be a bot) which takes ~ 1 hour (depending on confirmations required) and get your islandcoins nearly immediately (depending on block frequency there).
If you shop locally, just use your islandcoin wallet, if you shop online for porn (or buy something on the local black market) pay in BTC and let the seller convert to islandcoins if he wishes to.

The only challenge would be to make sure the conversion between the currencies is anonymous enough - this could be done by sending 1 islandcoin every second from the exchange to a virgin address. Once a customer buys islandcoins, they are sent to virgin addresses provided by the customer instead of virgin addresses by the exchange. If blockchain pruning is implemented, the spam transactions can be easily branched off and pruned and all that remains are: One BTC <--> exchange transaction, thousands of "1 islandcoin from a random unused address to another random unused address" transactions that mostly are pruned away after the coins are moved again at random intervals (or even better: pseudorandom intervals that match actual usage patterns statistically derived from analyzing the non-exchange coins!) and suddenly a few of these single islandcoins show up in wallets of merchants.

I searched for about 10 minutes & could not find the location of the island they are thinking about buying.

Is that available yet?  link anyone? 

thanks!

No phones, no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury? I think they are talking about Gilligan's Island.

Reddit crowd living in an island with no internet?
Right... tell me another joke, please, OP. You're good at this lol

It's a line from Weird Al's Amish Paradise lol.

Methinks this reddit island is a scam.

So is Bitcoin. A match made in heaven ;D

No I think that is an unrelated island.

It looks like potential locations are still being proposed here: http://www.reddit.com/r/redditisland


Yes, unrelated, but perhaps a good opportunity for ideas to converge.

I haven't spent very much time on Reddit at all.  But, so far, what I've read in relation to the Reddit Island project makes me think Bitcoin may not be the best fit for what the majority of its participants seem to envision.  I'm not really happy to say that, mind you; it just is what it is.

http://www.reddit.com/r/redditisland/comments/uh3f2/heres_what_i_think_is_best_easiest_and_most/

This seems to be a fairly typical sentiment, and, from what I have gathered of the demographic, likely a 100% serious one.  And, that's fine as an ideal.  No one can argue with that.

But, reality is not utopia.  Pitching in $4000 with a few thousand other forum-goers doesn't buy a spot for you to live on a tropical island.  Sorry, but it just doesn't.  That's pretty much the reason I didn't bother going this route with the Bitcoin Island (http://bitcoinisland.org) project.  I'm not going to be responsible for stripping an island of all it's vegetation and then killing off all nearby ocean life with a cloud of human waste, let alone burying thousands of dead hipsters afterwards.  Not that it would realistically get that far, anyways, as thousands of broke people scouring the oceans for enough seafood to sustain themselves without gasoline or motorboats would be doomed to pretty much immediate failure.

Eschewing McMansions and processed foods is one thing.  Surviving without something as basic as money and large-scale agriculture is something else.  Doing so on less than an acre, surrounded by thousands of others attempting the same, in a relatively hostile climate, is suicide.

http://www.reddit.com/r/redditisland/comments/uhaty/realism_for_reddit_island/

That having been said, there is obviously a lot of enthusiasm for what they have going so far.  As for the possibility of convergence, I can't really say since I'm still digesting their ideas.  I'd be interested to know how many of these people are serious enough to drop more like $30,000 on this plan;  and then, after that, how well they could handle living with either the evils of truly free market capitalism or some serious collectivism and central planning.  Because that's closer to what it would take to support thousands of internet nerds on a tropical island in perpetuity.

Speaking of converging, there's another thread on this forum...

http://www.luxurylaunches.com/entry_images/0309/17/amphicoach_amphibious_tourist_bus.jpg

Now that I've read some history of this project, it appears to have been sort of co-opted recently by an "ex" CIA agent and defense contractor, which is interesting for all sorts of reasons.