ANNOUNCEMENT: Stop getting trolled by taxes, it's time to put an end to Tax Day

[Elwar]

As I mentioned a few months ago here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=959464.0
I said that there would be something big on April 15th so I will cut right to it.

From the post I purposefully posted

NOt TROLLING

with a capitalized "NO TROLLING". This is the first part.

The Internet and especially Bitcoin forums have their fair share of trolls, from the Buttcoin people on reddit to the many people who are heavily invested in their own alt coin that they believe the best way for their coin to succeed is to knock Bitcoin out of the game (so that their cryptocurrency can become the target for the next round of alt coin trolls). There has even been evidence of paid trolls and with the amount of trolls and sock puppets on bitcointalk I would not put it past them being paid as well (see the influx of trolls that will surely join this thread).
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/11/internet_trolls_pose_a_threat_internet_commentators_shouldn_t_be_anonymous.html

I have been involved with Bitcoin since 2010, back then we were mainly a group of people who wanted to see Bitcoin succeed. Sure we had one or two people that would try to spread FUD to make the price drop but they did so because they too believed in Bitcoin, they just wanted more at cheaper prices. You could go onto the forum and ask serious questions and get serious responses from people who had a similar interest in making Bitcoin grow, and we could coordinate our efforts to further Bitcoin's progress. Now it becomes a matter of trying to play whack a troll with the ignore button.

So I came up with a solution. Utilizing the Bitcoin balance verification functionality already built into BitPools I have developed the BitPools forum. http://www.bitpools.com/forum

Each forum can be set to require that you hold a minimum amount of mBTC to post in the thread. From as little as 1 mBTC (about 20 cents) to as many as is desired by the group of posters. There is already precedent for this with the Whale Club on teamspeak where people have to prove that they have at least 500 bitcoins to participate. Each forum will obviously not require so many bitcoins but it will at least ensure that everyone involved in the discussion at least shares the commonality of having some bitcoins.

A sock puppet or paid trolls will likely be put off by needing to hold so many bitcoins for each user to the point that they hold many of the coins they wish to discredit.

The BitPools forum has been built from the ground up with Bitcoin in mind so it can evolve more easily and effectively to meet the needs of the Bitcoin community. There is no need to wait for a new release from some forum software company or deal with the difficulty of trying to put custom features into something that is not built for Bitcoin. While it is in its infancy right now, I have tried to make the functionality and look a cross between bitcointalk and reddit with threads and forums in an easy to traverse tree structure.

Now to the second part. In building the social media aspect of BitPools into the forum I have also included it into the Pool functionality so that different projects can more easily coordinate their efforts towards the goal of successfully funding their projects.

This brings us to the significance of April 15th.

What if April 15th was just another day? The whole point of BitPools is to replace the outdated concept of governments taxing people to pay for their projects. Instead, it allows groups of people with common interests to pool their money and vote with their bitcoins on the solution that they desire.

Toward this end, BitPools will be hosting the coordinating efforts of creating the first ever seastead (Marinea http://www.marinea.co). A project to create a self-sustaining town at sea with businesses and housing which will be open to investors who will get a share of the infrastructure. The project has been coordinating via Skype, e-mail and other tools bringing together a very knowledgeable global team of experts around the effort but will more easily be able to coordinate using BitPools social media and voting functionality.

Working with the Marinea project, BitPools will be adding functionality as the need is identified which can be used for any project that requires such coordination. This includes Project management tools, Gantt chart tools, chat functionality, file share, calendar and more.

By working with the Marinea project, BitPools can demonstrate to all those involved, just how voting with your bitcoins can work toward achieving project goals which can hopefully translate into a new era without taxes and a voluntary society on the seas as a demonstration to the rest of the world that there is a better alternative than the outdated systems we have now.

Finally, BitPools will be utilizing Bitrated (https://www.bitrated.com) as their API allows for third party coordination so that all contracts can easily be escrowed with trusted arbitration for the most fair means of funding projects. It will also make available the use of Bitrated trust within the user profile and forum software to further help with interaction without the random troll or sock puppet steering the discussion.

It is BitPools' goal to help anyone with a project in mind to most effectively coordinate their efforts toward achieving their goals. Go try it out at http://www.bitpools.com

tl;dr  A new Bitcoin forum with bitcoin balance features to discourage trolling and the first ever seastead will be using BitPools for coordination efforts.

[Elwar]

Updates:

Seasteading project name chosen: Marinea http://www.marinea.co
Forum software up and running at BitPools.com

[cryptozulu]

And there it is, so much doubt about when it will be "revealed"

Lets start reading!

[unamis76]

Came here to see what was supposed to happen today and saw this thread... Definitely not disappointed! I admit I was really skeptic at first because I had imagined none of this... Seems like a very good work, and you have some great ideas! Can't wait to see the forum...

[xDan]

Huh. Actually kind of interesting. Whether this counts as "big" remains to be seen.

[countryfree]

So this is it. The wait is over. I wish you good luck, and I add that I'm amazed you start big: "a self-sustaining town at sea".

Wow! Again, all the best!

[juju]

-snip-

Great idea, can't wait to see how this plays out. I think we all need to consider using Bitcoin/Blockchain to replace/improve existing infrastructure. I created some similar software using Django about a month back, not centered around Message Boards/Forums but it utilized a similar idea that if a person is holding Bitcoin it can help provide some 'guarantees' that the likely hood of something happening is higher.

Edit: Spelling

[dothebeats]

I'm not disappointed in going to this thread and see a TL;DR in the end.

But honestly, this seems to be the "big" event that you're referring to. I'll save this for reading later when I wake up. And also, in regards to the quotation, the politics and the governments of the world are sometimes tyrannical and sinful (actually, they are most of the time) forcing you to pay for taxes that you don't want because personally you believe that their ideas and beliefs are somehow different from yours. If you do not follow what they say, you'll end up getting into jail because of "disservice to the nation". That just sucks.

[unamis76]

I'm trying to sign up on BitPools, but the website is barely responding to requests... Is it just on my end?

[Elwar]

I'm trying to sign up on BitPools, but the website is barely responding to requests... Is it just on my end?

Once everything is loaded for the first time it should be very fast as everything is running on your computer.

[ibminer]

I'm a little disappointed. I wanted bigger news for Bitcoin... but I do think its an interesting concept, although I really dislike a persons financial status being the 'weight' of their voice.

[Elwar]

Hmmm interesting, seems like it will be nice about what about people who have most of their funds on cold storage notes?

Cold storage is the best way to use BitPools. You just have to move them once to verify your balance.

[pereira4]

Sounds like a positive idea. Is there going to be some sort of signature campaings on there, or ways to earn BTC, or it's only a place to talk and stuff?

[Hazir]

I read Elwar's post very carefully and I have to say that is interesting idea but... I think you are missing the point here. What you are offering is basically forum where you have to pay to write a post?
You need to pay each time you post in a thread? Am I reading this right? So you realise that 20 cents may not be much for you or anyone from US or western EU but it may be a lot for people from other parts of the globe, right? And you are making them unable to voice their opinion by putting wall of money on their way? I don't think it is a good move. You will be discussing things between members of your own elite "Whale Club"  probably.

[SpanishSoldier]

So April 15 was the announcement day for bitpools.com made by Chad Elwar ?

[Elwar]

I read Alwar's post very carefully and I have to say that is interesting idea but... I think you are missing the point here. What you are offering is basically forum where you have to pay to write a post?
You need to pay each time you post in a thread? Am I reading this right? So you realise that 20 cents may not be much for you or anyone from US or western EU but it may be a lot for people from other parts of the globe, right? And you are making them unable to voice their opinion by putting wall of money on their way? I don't think it is a good move. You will be discussing things between members of your own elite "Whale Club"  probably.

Not at all. You just have to have 20 cents in your cold storage wallet. BitPools uses the blockchain to verify that you have a bitcoin balance.


The story I use to explain this is a project I was involved in called the Free Town project. There were about 40-50 of us with the same goal, to buy some land in New Hampshire and set up a small community with the goal of liberty. The idea was if we bought a large parcel of land we could get the price per acre down and people could put in something like $5,000 and get around 5 acres.

After months of discussion of every little thing from the best location, the rules of the community, how the land would be divided, etc. we finally had a real estate investor set up a corporation for us and he began going to different locations for us and gave us a report on the site. It was nearing the point when we needed to put in the money. Myself and another couple signed a contract and sent $10,000 each (10 acres). Everyone else fell silent. Nobody had that much extra money put aside for the project. They were all talk, more into the idea of a free town than actually putting any money toward it. Myself and the couple got our money back after a few months of waiting for anyone to participate.

A lot of time could have been saved if we could have verified up front that people actually had the funds for the project that they were involved in planning.

BitPools solves this. And now there is a forum which will allow for communication among people with different levels of Bitcoin involvement.

[Elwar]

Sounds like a positive idea. Is there going to be some sort of signature campaings on there, or ways to earn BTC, or it's only a place to talk and stuff?

No plans for implementing signatures. The goal is quality discussion, not a race to get as many posts as possible.

If that means less posts then that is ok.

[Hazir]

I read Alwar's post very carefully and I have to say that is interesting idea but... I think you are missing the point here. What you are offering is basically forum where you have to pay to write a post?
You need to pay each time you post in a thread? Am I reading this right? So you realise that 20 cents may not be much for you or anyone from US or western EU but it may be a lot for people from other parts of the globe, right? And you are making them unable to voice their opinion by putting wall of money on their way? I don't think it is a good move. You will be discussing things between members of your own elite "Whale Club"  probably.

Not at all. You just have to have 20 cents in your cold storage wallet. BitPools uses the blockchain to verify that you have a bitcoin balance.


The story I use to explain this is a project I was involved in called the Free Town project. There were about 40-50 of us with the same goal, to buy some land in New Hampshire and set up a small community with the goal of liberty. The idea was if we bought a large parcel of land we could get the price per acre down and people could put in something like $5,000 and get around 5 acres.

After months of discussion of every little thing from the best location, the rules of the community, how the land would be divided, etc. we finally had a real estate investor set up a corporation for us and he began going to different locations for us and gave us a report on the site. It was nearing the point when we needed to put in the money. Myself and another couple signed a contract and sent $10,000 each (10 acres). Everyone else fell silent. Nobody had that much extra money put aside for the project. They were all talk, more into the idea of a free town than actually putting any money toward it. Myself and the couple got our money back after a few months of waiting for anyone to participate.

A lot of time could have been saved if we could have verified up front that people actually had the funds for the project that they were involved in planning.

BitPools solves this. And now there is a forum which will allow for communication among people with different levels of Bitcoin involvement.

I know that you feel betrayed when others backed from that "Free Town" investment project of yours (great idea btw, I really liked it) and now you think that you can prevent this kind of situation in the future by verifying before if said individuals are indeed 'loaded'. But this will only make you know for sure that people you are dealing with are indeed having said money, they claim they have. But they still can troll you and back from theirs previous claims, there are a lot of rich trolls after all.

[Elwar]

I know that you feel betrayed when others backed from that "Free Town" investment project of yours (great idea btw, I really liked it) and now you think that you can prevent this kind of situation in the future by verifying before if said individuals are indeed 'loaded'. But this will only make you know for sure that people you are dealing with are indeed having said money, they claim they have. But they still can troll you and back from theirs previous claims, there are a lot of rich trolls after all.

I don't claim that people will be willing to part with their funds, just that they have the funds available. There is a reason that people go to Shark Tank and pitch their ideas in front of rich VCs instead of pitching to random people on the street.

I don't really feel betrayed, that was 10 years ago, it was no big deal. It was just an inefficient way of doing things and a waste of a lot of peoples' time spent dreaming.

[pumawolf]

interesting.  is the ultimate goal to  lead it up to having our own  nation, btcnation? serious question.   

[p2pbucks]

great project

I wonder how to ensure the safety of pool's money , are there some kinds of multisig or precautions to prevent the pool keeper takes all bitcoins run away like evolution ?

[Sithara007]

great project

I wonder how to ensure the safety of pool's money , are there some kinds of multisig or precautions to prevent the pool keeper takes all bitcoins run away like evolution ?

That will the most difficult task because no one can trust other person so it will be very difficult to come up with a solution to safeguard the pool money. Does anyone have any idea?

[ebliever]

great project

I wonder how to ensure the safety of pool's money , are there some kinds of multisig or precautions to prevent the pool keeper takes all bitcoins run away like evolution ?

That will the most difficult task because no one can trust other person so it will be very difficult to come up with a solution to safeguard the pool money. Does anyone have any idea?

What are you talking about? I figured you would just sign a message proving ownership of X number of bitcoins. No need to transfer them out of your control.

I think it's a very interesting idea, and could eliminate at least a little of the noise ratio in a forum compared to what we have now. I'm going to give it a try.

One question: Will be be possible to aggregate signed messages from multiple accounts to prove our ownership of "X" BTC? For example, I have a bit over 10 BTC in one account, 3 more in another, some at Coinbase, and odds and ends at a few altcoin exchanges. Will I be able to provide multiple signatures proving my total BTC net worth, or will I only be able to provide the proof of ownership for the 10 BTC account?

[D05GTO]

Like your ideas and the community is great. Here is one of the communities that is land based.  http://www.iiicitadel.com/index.html

Maybe you could make some connections there to have some land base also.

[Cruxer]

My 2 cents... there is only 2 things guranteed in this world, death and taxes

[Elwar]

great project

I wonder how to ensure the safety of pool's money , are there some kinds of multisig or precautions to prevent the pool keeper takes all bitcoins run away like evolution ?

That will the most difficult task because no one can trust other person so it will be very difficult to come up with a solution to safeguard the pool money. Does anyone have any idea?

What are you talking about? I figured you would just sign a message proving ownership of X number of bitcoins. No need to transfer them out of your control.

I think it's a very interesting idea, and could eliminate at least a little of the noise ratio in a forum compared to what we have now. I'm going to give it a try.

One question: Will be be possible to aggregate signed messages from multiple accounts to prove our ownership of "X" BTC? For example, I have a bit over 10 BTC in one account, 3 more in another, some at Coinbase, and odds and ends at a few altcoin exchanges. Will I be able to provide multiple signatures proving my total BTC net worth, or will I only be able to provide the proof of ownership for the 10 BTC account?

You are correct, the pool does not hold any money. Using the blockchain we can verify that you hold the funds.

We currently only allow one address but multiple addresses is definitely in the works.

[Kprawn]

What is the minimum requirement to join? Hopefully not 500 Bitcoins? ...

I do not see, how this will stop "shills" ....Their masters have big pockets... They can just buy a bunch of Bitcoins for their "shills" and get approved to join the forum.

You could just allow everyone, and "moderate" the people, who are identified as "trolls or shills". The only reason it is not working here and on Reddit, is because moderators allow for freedom of speech.

I hope this will not exclude financially "poor" people, from having a voice. Bitcoin should be for everyone, not just for a elite group of rich people.  { I know people, who are currently unemployed, and live from income derived from Bitcoin, who has brilliant minds and make exellent contributions to the community... it would be sad to exclude them, based on their financial status} 

[Elwar]

What is the minimum requirement to join? Hopefully not 500 Bitcoins? ...

I do not see, how this will stop "shills" ....Their masters have big pockets... They can just buy a bunch of Bitcoins for their "shills" and get approved to join the forum.

You could just allow everyone, and "moderate" the people, who are identified as "trolls or shills". The only reason it is not working here and on Reddit, is because moderators allow for freedom of speech.

I hope this will not exclude financially "poor" people, from having a voice. Bitcoin should be for everyone, not just for a elite group of rich people.  { I know people, who are currently unemployed, and live from income derived from Bitcoin, who has brilliant minds and make exellent contributions to the community... it would be sad to exclude them, based on their financial status} 

There will be different minimums for different discussions. The sitewide minimum is 1 mBTC (about 22 cents).

The shills tend to be invested in alt coins or have no bitcoins at all.

A Bitrated link to user profiles will help as well.

[Wary]

I'm afraid it's a bit early for a serious bitcoin crowdfunding. We'll have to wait for bitcoin price to reach 5K$ at least. Or 50K$.

[Elwar]

interesting.  is the ultimate goal to  lead it up to having our own  nation, btcnation? serious question.   

The ultimate goal is a sovereign nation.

As the technical adviser for the project on all things network related I have made it clear that the seastead has to be able to have access to Bitcoin and most people are ok with Bitcoin as the seastead currency.

However, the first seastead will not be sovereign. Our goal for the first project will be to address the engineering hurdles and the business aspect of it. As such we will likely be located in a harbor where real estate values are very high (and under the legal jurisdiction of the host country), essentially creating real estate in an environment where every square foot is expensive. This allows for the capital to succeed and the ability to replicate the process for more seasteads which can then become their own sovereign entities.

One of the main businesses will be a data center where the cooling aspect of the sea can be used to cool the computers (and using several options for cheap energy). This will be very useful for a mining operation.

[Elwar]

I'm afraid it's a bit early for a serious bitcoin crowdfunding. We'll have to wait for bitcoin price to reach 5K$ at least. Or 50K$.

This is what I like about the low price right now.

People can start coordinating now with a set amount of bitcoins that are reasonable for the average person. Then as the price grows, the opportunities for success grow with it.


For example, the initial seastead platform is estimated to cost about $5 million. If the seasteading pool can gather 100 people with 10 bitcoins each (at current prices that is about $2200) they can plan and coordinate their preferences. When the bitcoin price reaches $5k, those 100 people have the funds to execute their plan.

Same for any other project that requires time and coordination.

[Realpra]

I used to be into seasteading. Let me tell you there are a million things you haven't thought of.

If you really want to do it then buy an island:
http://www.privateislandsonline.com/islands/alligator-caye-parcel
http://www.privateislandsonline.com/islands/coral-island2

It still won't work, but its cheaper than a boat for far more area and unlike a boat it will not need brutal amounts of maintenance.

Things you haven't thought of:
Maintenance - Boats rust, even glasfiber boats need to be taken up once a year and painted etc..
Cost - Land is pretty cheap even in urban areas compared to a boat. Large boats costs millions. Remote areas of land where you could do whatever can be gotten for very little.
Jobs - What will people do? Even if we assume that our liberal ideas would create a 100 times better economy its pretty hard building an economy with 20 people on a boat/remote island.
Supplies - Remote as you are almost everything will have to be flown or shipped out to you adding even more cost/making you need a second ship/plane.
Seasickness.
How to get to the doctor.
Entertainment in a small area.
All the politics - Anarchy hur hur is great and all, but who decides where the boat goes or what to invest in. What is the political framework for dealing with a guy raping his daughter or is that fine? I'm guess there's a thing or two there you haven't considered in your dreams of blue waters and escaping the state.
Guns you need guns for pirates.
Internet - You won't have it that far out, not fast anyway. Wifi bridges can shoot 20km if you're static at the coast, but it's something to consider.
Power - How do you make it? You can't afford something big and efficient/the boat can't hold it so you would have to use a diesel generator and solar panels and shop each month for expensive fuel.
Also solar panels break/degrade after 10-20 years and give relatively little power in the meantime.
Housing - Can you build a house? Plumbing? Wires? Insulation? AC?
Women - Even if you have one she will go mental on you after a month at sea, most women will anyway.

Trust me I wanted to do this myself.
Do what I do now: Use crypto to hide WITHIN the existing states. Why should I run from my own country? I will take it back.

(Nifty idea with the BTC to speak thing.)

[Elwar]

I used to be into seasteading. Let me tell you there are a million things you haven't thought of.

If you really want to do it then buy an island:
http://www.privateislandsonline.com/islands/alligator-caye-parcel
http://www.privateislandsonline.com/islands/coral-island2

It still won't work, but its cheaper than a boat for far more area and unlike a boat it will not need brutal amounts of maintenance.

Things you haven't thought of:
Maintenance - Boats rust, even glasfiber boats need to be taken up once a year and painted etc..
Cost - Land is pretty cheap even in urban areas compared to a boat. Large boats costs millions. Remote areas of land where you could do whatever can be gotten for very little.
Jobs - What will people do? Even if we assume that our liberal ideas would create a 100 times better economy its pretty hard building an economy with 20 people on a boat/remote island.
Supplies - Remote as you are almost everything will have to be flown or shipped out to you adding even more cost/making you need a second ship/plane.
Seasickness.
How to get to the doctor.
Entertainment in a small area.
All the politics - Anarchy hur hur is great and all, but who decides where the boat goes or what to invest in. What is the political framework for dealing with a guy raping his daughter or is that fine? I'm guess there's a thing or two there you haven't considered in your dreams of blue waters and escaping the state.
Guns you need guns for pirates.
Internet - You won't have it that far out, not fast anyway. Wifi bridges can shoot 20km if you're static at the coast, but it's something to consider.
Power - How do you make it? You can't afford something big and efficient/the boat can't hold it so you would have to use a diesel generator and solar panels and shop each month for expensive fuel.
Also solar panels break/degrade after 10-20 years and give relatively little power in the meantime.
Housing - Can you build a house? Plumbing? Wires? Insulation? AC?
Women - Even if you have one she will go mental on you after a month at sea, most women will anyway.

Trust me I wanted to do this myself.
Do what I do now: Use crypto to hide WITHIN the existing states. Why should I run from my own country? I will take it back.

(Nifty idea with the BTC to speak thing.)

Before you say you know what I have not thought of, I have been involved in the seasteading community for almost a decade.

We will have a seastead, we have a path forward. It will happen.

Everything you listed has been addressed long ago (other than the every woman being crazy thing).

[Realpra]

Before you say you know what I have not thought of, I have been involved in the seasteading community for almost a decade.

We will have a seastead, we have a path forward. It will happen.

Everything you listed has been addressed long ago (other than the every woman being crazy thing).

I'm not saying you can't get on a boat, I'm saying it might be difficult to have what most people consider a normal life there and even if you can you'll probably end up paying more for it than otherwise needed.

If you have a solution to all those things I wouldn't mind hearing them or seeing links. If you just really really want to wish away the problems and daydream I'll leave you to it.

[Elwar]

Before you say you know what I have not thought of, I have been involved in the seasteading community for almost a decade.

We will have a seastead, we have a path forward. It will happen.

Everything you listed has been addressed long ago (other than the every woman being crazy thing).

I'm not saying you can't get on a boat, I'm saying it might be difficult to have what most people consider a normal life there and even if you can you'll probably end up paying more for it than otherwise needed.

If you have a solution to all those things I wouldn't mind hearing them or seeing links. If you just really really want to wish away the problems and daydream I'll leave you to it.

Ok, while many solutions are discussed ad nauseum among seasteaders and no one solution is the best I will address what you listed:

Maintenance - Boats rust, even glasfiber boats need to be taken up once a year and painted etc..

We're not talking about a boat here, we're talking about platforms (around 50 to 100 meters wide) that can interlock and expand to a city sized seastead.
The popular consensus has been that it should be built out of concrete. This will last hundreds if not thousands of years. One of our experts has built similar structures and there are many working examples of floating concrete platforms (one even has a landing strip on it).

Cost - Land is pretty cheap even in urban areas compared to a boat. Large boats costs millions. Remote areas of land where you could do whatever can be gotten for very little.

Cost is certainly a factor. You could buy something in middle of the US but the first million dollars that your community brings in will get the attention of the government.
Our initial estimates on cost using concrete are fairly comparable to oceanfront real estate. As the platform can float and be located anywhere we are looking at affluent harbors where real estate prices are in the millions. That makes our housing options very competitive giving a good return on investment.

Jobs - What will people do? Even if we assume that our liberal ideas would create a 100 times better economy its pretty hard building an economy with 20 people on a boat/remote island.

The seastead will be far more than 20 people. The investment group has planned to build at least 6 businesses into the initial structure with one business actually being the building of more seasteads. It will likely be a tourist destination which will provide plenty of monetary inflow.

Supplies - Remote as you are almost everything will have to be flown or shipped out to you adding even more cost/making you need a second ship/plane.

The initial seastead will not be remote. But we have certainly discussed such a thing down the line. The seastead community will need to be large enough to warrant such a move which comes with several costs such as breakwaters, mooring and several other factors including establishing a trade route. The popular opinion being that we should position it within an established trade route and take advantage of that as a hub.

Seasickness.

Waves and saltwater are the constant issue being addressed when it comes to engineering. Like I said, the initial one will be in a harbor because we will be focusing first on engineering and a viable business model. Breakwaters and designs to minimize wave impact are a constant discussion.

How to get to the doctor.

It is our hope that a medical facility will be one of the main businesses providing medical tourism. People are willing to fly to foreign countries for lower cost medical treatments due to a lot less red tape and more freedom. Medical advances will likely thrive on a seastead.

Entertainment in a small area.

Entertainment will be abundant. Swimming, fishing, SCUBA, nightclubs, concerts, boating, jet skis, you name it.

All the politics - Anarchy hur hur is great and all, but who decides where the boat goes or what to invest in. What is the political framework for dealing with a guy raping his daughter or is that fine? I'm guess there's a thing or two there you haven't considered in your dreams of blue waters and escaping the state.

There will likely be different political structures for each seastead. Initially we will be under the laws of whichever nation we fly our flag under and whichever nation's harbor we are docked in will have limited jurisdiction, there are many legal issues that have been discussed when it comes to nation laws and distance from land. When it comes to seasteads outside of the EEZ, each seastead will have to come up with the societal structure that they like best. And with multiple of these, we can essentially have government startups. Some will succeed, others will fail. When you can float your house away to another seastead, there will be competition to keep people.

Guns you need guns for pirates.

While we will not be settling in in heavily pirate populated areas, there will be no shortage of guns owned by seasteaders.

Internet - You won't have it that far out, not fast anyway. Wifi bridges can shoot 20km if you're static at the coast, but it's something to consider.

Just like with trade routes, ideally we would set up in a place where we can become an Internet hub with underwater cables. As most telecom people can tell you. It is not the cost of the fiber that is expensive but the cost of laying the cable (government fees, regulations, lobbying, etc). There can also be satellite which is more expensive and not good for real time streaming but will be good for redundancy. In a harbor we will likely do a microwave type of setup, wifi and underwater cable.

Power - How do you make it? You can't afford something big and efficient/the boat can't hold it so you would have to use a diesel generator and solar panels and shop each month for expensive fuel.

Power will be abundant with the power of the sea. OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion), wind, wave power, solar, hydrogen producing algae, etc. Many people suggest selling electricity to the host nation but I think we could use any excess electricity for cheap mining operations.

Also solar panels break/degrade after 10-20 years and give relatively little power in the meantime.

Yes, solar panels are usually rated for 20 years. It would be unwise to pay for anything that does not give a return on the investment over its lifetime. But the price has come down quite a bit on those.

Housing - Can you build a house? Plumbing? Wires? Insulation? AC?

Housing will likely not be your typical square house with slanted roof. Most likely dome shaped or containerized housing units (CHUs, which they use in Iraq/Afghanistan) or some other design. OTEC provides fresh water and air conditioning as a bi-product, using the cool water from lower depths will make housing very comfortable.

Like I said, there are many solutions so the ones I listed are just cherry picking from several discussions. We have the expertise and our builder does not see any issues in getting the initial platform built once the design is in place and the investment is finalized. That is what we are working on now.

I am dedicated to making this happen. I have already left the US and have downsized my lifestyle so that I can pick up and go at any moment. I will definitely be one of the first ones living on the seastead so I have made sure to have my input when it comes to design so that it will be a liveable environment with everything for daily living addressed.

[yayayo]

The project seems interesting. However its strengths do not lie in preventing forum trolling, because holding some bitcent is not a serious hurdle for a determined troll. On the other hand, needing to proof ownership of Bitcoin might turn off people, because of the added effort to join and privacy issues.

The strength of this project is - provided that it can draw in enough users - that it might be the first successful Bitcoin-crowdfunding platform, because Bitcoin users will be concentrated in one community and have already shown some financial commitment.

I don't know if it will work, but I wish you the very best for your venture!

ya.ya.yo!

[Snail2]

Good, but the site might needs some more work as it falling apart (the top quoter keep disappearing and the content not resizing with the window) both under Chrome and Firefox.

[Beliathon]

I have no problem with taxes whatsoever, so long as they're not enforced with violence. Kidnapping and caging non-violent innocent citizens for tax violations sounds an awful lot like debtor's prison to me, which is supposed to be illegal here in the USA.
When you don't pay taxes, "your" (read: their) government sends Men of Violence to collect. That's the moment I treat the government and their men as enemies.

 "Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare him my enemy."
-Proudhon

[Elwar]

Good, but the site might needs some more work as it falling apart (the top quoter keep disappearing and the content not resizing with the window) both under Chrome and Firefox.

Yes, I have an updated release that is pending. I locked down the site this past few months so good that I locked myself out yesterday when I went to put in the update. So I have been working with the hosting service to restore access.

[Rampion]

While I agree with some posters that the idea of using someone's wealth as a parameter to establish the "weight" of their voice is flawed and counterproductive, I can see how it can be useful for some applications. Furthermore, I think this is the key sentence in the OP:

it will at least ensure that everyone involved in the discussion at least shares the commonality of having some bitcoins

In this case the OP proposes a forum in which you can post only if you prove you hold a certain amount of coins - that's the "commonality" the users of that board will share. I think we can have many more use cases in which users could prove a certain fact (not necessarily wealth) in a decentralized and trustless way thanks to blockchain technology.

A silly example: open source developers could prove in an accurate, trustless, counterfeit-proof and decentralized way that they have committed a certain number of lines of code to a certain set of projects.

Another example: users of certain products could prove ownership of such products thanks to data embedded in the blockchain, and so on...

TL;DR: Elwar's solution seems very interesting to me in a broad sense and from a technological standpoint, even if I dislike the idea that someone's wealth should be used to establish the "weight" of their voice.

[BADecker]

Taxes are not voluntary. The idea of a voluntary tax is a self-contradictory term.

Voluntary is donation.

Tax is forced.

If there is an agreement among a group that they will all pay a certain amount, it is a voluntary agreement. Those who come along later need to decide if they want to take part in the agreement that is already set up, or not.

[krb91]

The seastead sounds remarkably similar to the floating community proposed by the Marinecoin dev.

[tss]

congrats on the launch.  i hope people give it a try and a good user base forms as its obvious that the snr ratio there should be much better than here..  i figured this is what you were announcing :-)  thanks for that pm way back

[Realpra]

Maintenance - Boats rust, even glasfiber boats need to be taken up once a year and painted etc..

We're not talking about a boat here, we're talking about platforms (around 50 to 100 meters wide) that can interlock and expand to a city sized seastead.
The popular consensus has been that it should be built out of concrete. This will last hundreds if not thousands of years. One of our experts has built similar structures and there are many working examples of floating concrete platforms (one even has a landing strip on it).

Okay so I like some of the ideas and I hadn't thought of locating on top of existing cables. The rest I knew about or had thought about myself.

However it all falls apart with your platform solution - its basically just another housing project in an existing city/harbor/bay under existing laws.
Are prices even going to be radically lower? Probably not by much - even factoring in the high city real estate prices much will be eaten by the platform costs.

Another architecturally edgy building for the rich - with luck maybe middle class city folk, but not really much "homesteading" or "sea" in it.


Floating concrete at sea won't work, it will crumble very fast. I know this because it has been done before at D-day WWII; they floated over temporary giant hollow concrete blocks and used them as floating landing harbors.
Concrete is very strong... and very brittle, it can't flex in the sea and so it breaks and crumbles.

You also can't just link many platforms, the links would be under immense stress and would either break or need maintenance.

Maybe you could build a static platform at some low depth ocean location maybe even get lucky and find such a location overlapping with cables and international trade - you "only" need some 1 billion dollars + luck to get that going I think

For real seasteading to work you would need some kind of ultra strong and flexible rustfree material that is also very cheap to build your floating areas from. Sign me up when hyper-diamond is invented.

EDIT: And again after spending all those millions you end with a relatively small area even if it works.
If you spent a similar amount of money on a small army and a plot of land you could have a REAL nation regardless of what local authorities wanted - with cheap ground that doesn't need maintenance and area to do a range of activities.
No matter what though starting a nation from scratch costs at least a billion or two with luck I would guess.

[hdbuck]

Where your taxes go: http://billmoyers.com/2014/04/14/the-surprising-truth-behind-tax-day-where-your-taxes-go/

[Elwar]

Maintenance - Boats rust, even glasfiber boats need to be taken up once a year and painted etc..

We're not talking about a boat here, we're talking about platforms (around 50 to 100 meters wide) that can interlock and expand to a city sized seastead.
The popular consensus has been that it should be built out of concrete. This will last hundreds if not thousands of years. One of our experts has built similar structures and there are many working examples of floating concrete platforms (one even has a landing strip on it).

Okay so I like some of the ideas and I hadn't thought of locating on top of existing cables. The rest I knew about or had thought about myself.

However it all falls apart with your platform solution - its basically just another housing project in an existing city/harbor/bay under existing laws.
Are prices even going to be radically lower? Probably not by much - even factoring in the high city real estate prices much will be eaten by the platform costs.

Another architecturally edgy building for the rich - with luck maybe middle class city folk, but not really much "homesteading" or "sea" in it.


Floating concrete at sea won't work, it will crumble very fast. I know this because it has been done before at D-day WWII; they floated over temporary giant hollow concrete blocks and used them as floating landing harbors.
Concrete is very strong... and very brittle, it can't flex in the sea and so it breaks and crumbles.

You also can't just link many platforms, the links would be under immense stress and would either break or need maintenance.

Maybe you could build a static platform at some low depth ocean location maybe even get lucky and find such a location overlapping with cables and international trade - you "only" need some 1 billion dollars + luck to get that going I think

For real seasteading to work you would need some kind of ultra strong and flexible rustfree material that is also very cheap to build your floating areas from. Sign me up when hyper-diamond is invented.

EDIT: And again after spending all those millions you end with a relatively small area even if it works.
If you spent a similar amount of money on a small army and a plot of land you could have a REAL nation regardless of what local authorities wanted - with cheap ground that doesn't need maintenance and area to do a range of activities.
No matter what though starting a nation from scratch costs at least a billion or two with luck I would guess.

While this is a much larger project than we are working on, we are using this type of design on a smaller scale:


Concrete is brittle, that is why rebar is used, I have built some floating prototypes with concrete with no support and you are right, they fall apart after a few weeks. And concrete actually hardens more when in the water under constant pressure. There are many examples of concrete structures in the ocean. Some WWII structures are still standing.

Here is a very detailed engineering report done addressing most of the engineering challenges:
http://seasteading.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DeltaSync-Final-Concept-Report.pdf

Personally I will be submitting a design that will get the costs down less than $10k for a small living environment (about dorm room sized). The Seasteading Institute ( http://www.seasteading.org ) is doing a design contest in June which should result in some great concepts.

I agree that being in a harbor under the laws of another country are certainly not ideal. But what we have right now are zero seasteads. This will be the first one. The Wright Brothers' first airplane had terrible food service, the bathrooms were quite uncomfortable and the in flight movie selection was pretty much non-existant. But they had to start somewhere.

[ibminer]

The announcement implied that something big was going to happen for bitcoin on April 15th, which was a little misleading.
At this point, its an interesting start-up project based on a unique mix between a pay-to-join forum & kickstarter..... and yes, its based on Bitcoin.

IMHO You may have the task of getting whales to accept this forum & concept before others with lower coins join in. If it were me, I'd want to see quicker mass adoption with the site and I'm not sure you can have that without smaller bitcoin holders jumping on board. I don't see this site being appealing to smaller bitcoin holders unless they see all of the whales flocking to the site, and then they may just follow them over to be where the money is. I may be wrong but I also don't foresee whales flocking to join the site without the mass adoption... and so, I'm not as optimistic, as much as I want to see a successful bitcoin project right now, I'm not sure this will be the one.

If the idea is mainly to create a private forum for whales/high bitcoin holders, this is heading down the right path but its still a tough sell unless Elwar has a lot of friends on standby ready to start investing in the BitPools community?   

All that said, any effort that supports Bitcoin in general should be attempted and I commend Elwar for putting in the work to get a site like this running and I wish you & BitPools the best!  



and for the record, hdbuck, there is only one Stewie.....
<-----and he has moving eyes         but I'm humbled you enjoy the design so much.      

[hdbuck]

and for the record, hdbuck, there is only one Stewie.....
<-----and he has moving eyes         but I'm humbled you enjoy the design so much.    

what the deuce?!

i found it on google but kudos if your the one who made it!
too bad i cant have the rolling eyes too tho.. should enter my time machine to upload it as a gif when it was still possible.. annnd buy bitcoins. ^^

[ibminer]

and for the record, hdbuck, there is only one Stewie.....
<-----and he has moving eyes         but I'm humbled you enjoy the design so much.    

what the deuce?!

i found it on google but kudos if your the one who made it!
too bad i cant have the rolling eyes too tho.. should enter my time machine to upload it as a gif when it was still possible.. annnd buy bitcoins. ^^

Its all good, I did make it... didn't think Google had ever crawled it though, I guess it is on there somewhere. The only other place I've uploaded it to was a private forum run by CoinHoarder,  which doesn't exist anymore, but the animation had red eyes.
Regardless, if animations are ever allowed again, I'm sure it will be everywhere. Until then, I can try to remain unique  

[Realpra]

Concrete is brittle, that is why rebar is used, I have built some floating prototypes with concrete with no support and you are right, they fall apart after a few weeks. And concrete actually hardens more when in the water under constant pressure. There are many examples of concrete structures in the ocean. Some WWII structures are still standing.

Here is a very detailed engineering report done addressing most of the engineering challenges:
http://seasteading.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DeltaSync-Final-Concept-Report.pdf

Personally I will be submitting a design that will get the costs down less than $10k for a small living environment (about dorm room sized). The Seasteading Institute ( http://www.seasteading.org ) is doing a design contest in June which should result in some great concepts.

I agree that being in a harbor under the laws of another country are certainly not ideal. But what we have right now are zero seasteads. This will be the first one. The Wright Brothers' first airplane had terrible food service, the bathrooms were quite uncomfortable and the in flight movie selection was pretty much non-existant. But they had to start somewhere.

I'm not sure about the technical aspects, I just have my doubts. I mean lets say it lasts 200 years with no maintenance before the rebar rusts and the concrete crumbles. That would be very good right?
Ok we build a seastead there so far so good.

Now imagine all of America or all of France disappearing and having to be rebuilt every 200 years. I'm guess that would be devastating economically speaking to our little seastead.

I'll hand you that 1 seastead is better than none if only as a testing ground.


Just remember that people had been building planes 500-1000 years before the Wright brothers, they didn't succeed or start anything because they were the first. They succeeded and the airplane industry was made because they had the newly invented gasoline engine. In other words they had "hyper-diamond".

Anyway I'll give you an idea of my own: Not all areas need the same carrying capacity/stiffness.
If you want large areas you can split them up:
1. Industry/residential: Heavy carrying platforms - like your rebar concrete designs.
2. Gardens, parks, markets and other low weight human accessible ares: Thick sheets of plastic. Due to low load almost no robustness or carrying ability is needed and plastic material creep/breakage will not be major issue. I would suggest multiple linked disc type platforms of this type.
3. Farming: Specialized plants or algae put on basically bubble wrap. Spool bubble wrap into ocean. Spool the other end back and harvest crops. Large area can be utilized easily from a small central heavy platform like this. You could even replace the bubble wrap with tangled seaweed to avoid the need for plastic. Infuse with nutrients in spooling area at night. Nutrients come from sea bottom via sand pump or residential trash. (Seaweed could be fed to cows)

I would also look into capsule hotel designs for the residential areas. It might make it much easier to afford for the poor.

[Elwar]

Concrete is brittle, that is why rebar is used, I have built some floating prototypes with concrete with no support and you are right, they fall apart after a few weeks. And concrete actually hardens more when in the water under constant pressure. There are many examples of concrete structures in the ocean. Some WWII structures are still standing.

Here is a very detailed engineering report done addressing most of the engineering challenges:
http://seasteading.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DeltaSync-Final-Concept-Report.pdf

Personally I will be submitting a design that will get the costs down less than $10k for a small living environment (about dorm room sized). The Seasteading Institute ( http://www.seasteading.org ) is doing a design contest in June which should result in some great concepts.

I agree that being in a harbor under the laws of another country are certainly not ideal. But what we have right now are zero seasteads. This will be the first one. The Wright Brothers' first airplane had terrible food service, the bathrooms were quite uncomfortable and the in flight movie selection was pretty much non-existant. But they had to start somewhere.

I'm not sure about the technical aspects, I just have my doubts. I mean lets say it lasts 200 years with no maintenance before the rebar rusts and the concrete crumbles. That would be very good right?
Ok we build a seastead there so far so good.

Now imagine all of America or all of France disappearing and having to be rebuilt every 200 years. I'm guess that would be devastating economically speaking to our little seastead.

I'll hand you that 1 seastead is better than none if only as a testing ground.


Just remember that people had been building planes 500-1000 years before the Wright brothers, they didn't succeed or start anything because they were the first. They succeeded and the airplane industry was made because they had the newly invented gasoline engine. In other words they had "hyper-diamond".

Anyway I'll give you an idea of my own: Not all areas need the same carrying capacity/stiffness.
If you want large areas you can split them up:
1. Industry/residential: Heavy carrying platforms - like your rebar concrete designs.
2. Gardens, parks, markets and other low weight human accessible ares: Thick sheets of plastic. Due to low load almost no robustness or carrying ability is needed and plastic material creep/breakage will not be major issue. I would suggest multiple linked disc type platforms of this type.
3. Farming: Specialized plants or algae put on basically bubble wrap. Spool bubble wrap into ocean. Spool the other end back and harvest crops. Large area can be utilized easily from a small central heavy platform like this. You could even replace the bubble wrap with tangled seaweed to avoid the need for plastic. Infuse with nutrients in spooling area at night. Nutrients come from sea bottom via sand pump or residential trash. (Seaweed could be fed to cows)

I would also look into capsule hotel designs for the residential areas. It might make it much easier to afford for the poor.

Good idea on different types of platforms depending upon industry. Plastic is not good for the ocean due to the saltwater but that could change with technology.

There does seem to be a lot of algae science that people bring up. Looks like some great potential.

I will be presenting a capsule type of design to the Seasteading Institute in about a month. The building materials for the smallest living unit (dorm room sized) should be under $2,000 which could get the price between $10-$20k for a finished unit. With the price coming down over time with mass production.