We should build a seastead

[Elwar]

Would it be possible to build these islands from recycled materials?
I know that there have been a few pilot projects testing this out, but I wonder if it's feasible to do on such a grand scale.

This is an article from 2015, but it gives you an idea of what I mean:
https://www.livingcircular.veolia.com/en/recycled-floating-islands

Just for the record, I'm not talking about something amateurish like this:
http://www.earthporm.com/environmentalist-builds-floating-island-100000-plastic-bottles/

I doubt that would survive the constant onslaught of the high seas.


Perhaps it might be better to just create a cooperative, instead of an ICO? What's the benefit of one over the other?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative

I have been involved with Blue Frontiers who is building seasteads and they keep talking about recycled materials and environmentally friendly building methods. I'm not involved in that part of things so I don't know the details. My participation is mainly on the blockchain side of things.

The seastead ICO is already underway with the presale going right now at http://www.varyon.io

[eternalgloom]

Would it be possible to build these islands from recycled materials?
I know that there have been a few pilot projects testing this out, but I wonder if it's feasible to do on such a grand scale.

This is an article from 2015, but it gives you an idea of what I mean:
https://www.livingcircular.veolia.com/en/recycled-floating-islands

Just for the record, I'm not talking about something amateurish like this:
http://www.earthporm.com/environmentalist-builds-floating-island-100000-plastic-bottles/

I doubt that would survive the constant onslaught of the high seas.


Perhaps it might be better to just create a cooperative, instead of an ICO? What's the benefit of one over the other?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative

I have been involved with Blue Frontiers who is building seasteads and they keep talking about recycled materials and environmentally friendly building methods. I'm not involved in that part of things so I don't know the details. My participation is mainly on the blockchain side of things.

The seastead ICO is already underway with the presale going right now at http://www.varyon.io

Interesting, I didn't know that your project was specifically focused on creating these islands in an environmentally friendly way.
The way I see it, a society on these artificial islands should be at least partially self-sufficient in many ways.

It would be an amazing feat if you were able to create new additions without sourcing building materials from the nearest land mass.

[paulmaritz]

Would it be possible to build these islands from recycled materials?
I know that there have been a few pilot projects testing this out, but I wonder if it's feasible to do on such a grand scale.

This is an article from 2015, but it gives you an idea of what I mean:
https://www.livingcircular.veolia.com/en/recycled-floating-islands

Just for the record, I'm not talking about something amateurish like this:
http://www.earthporm.com/environmentalist-builds-floating-island-100000-plastic-bottles/

I doubt that would survive the constant onslaught of the high seas.


Perhaps it might be better to just create a cooperative, instead of an ICO? What's the benefit of one over the other?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative

It might be possible, but will they be able to neutralize the effect of the waves and wind enough for people to actually live safely on it? Personally I doubt it, especially considering that steel and concrete are normally used in such structures for maximum stability. That being said, recycled materials could certainly be used to build structures on top of the floating island itself. E.g. http://www.criticalcactus.com/beautiful-recycled-homes/

[Cryptov8!]

Hopefully these seasteads will have the ability to clean the ocean as they go and burn the waste for fuel

[KingScorpio]

The Bitcoin price is amazingly high, and it has stayed amazingly high for quite some time. I've been expecting it to crash for the last year, and I was especially expecting it to crash in response to the various B2X nonsense, but it's still quite high. These high prices may well be long-term-stable. Therefore, since we gentlemen are in fact the new wealthy elite, I think that the time has come to work toward a project that I know a lot of early Bitcoiners (including myself) have always dreamed of: a mostly-sovereign libertarian seastead. There must be a lot of Bitcoin millionaires who would be willing to work toward this.

The Seasteading Institute (TSI) has an example seastead design with a total estimated cost of $115 million with room for 270 people. So that'd be an average of $425,000 per person up-front, plus a yearly maintenance cost of $13,000 per person. IMO it should be fairly easy to fund something this size from Bitcoiners, and you could probably go even bigger/better. TSI has already done a ton of research/engineering work and built a ton of connections, so a project to actually build something like this would have a great head-start.

The main goal of seasteading is to have a jurisdiction with minimal-possible regulation and government involvement, creating a space for extreme innovation. Like Hong Kong, but even better. At least to start with, you'd probably have to officially be under some government's jurisdiction (via a special agreement with that government), but it will hopefully be possible to keep this very minimal. TSI has already had some success in negotiating this stuff with some governments. Another goal would be to create a good environment for the people living on the seastead: fast Internet (maybe via laser links), high security, overall good facilities, etc.

Who here is interested in participating in this, and what would you want a seastead to have before living on one? I'm not going to collect any money from people, but if there's enough interest (maybe $75 million or so), we can hire some people who actually know what they're doing and create a proper company with a board of directors, etc. Maybe it could even be made into an ICO, though I'm pretty skeptical of those in general.

i think in general that project cryptocurrencies are a good idea,

[2342q6tegw]

How about funding moon,space and mars colony next? BTC O'Neill cylinder one.

If we can't colonize the water, how are we supposed to concur space?

That's why I said next. Ocean(maybe deserts), orbit, moon, deimos, mars.

[Elwar]

Last day to get your bonus varyon today at http://www.varyon.io

up to 15% bonus during the pre-sale

[badaovodich]

This is a great project, but it's a bit crazy when break into the sea. And it will be difficult without the support of anyone from the government.

[Elwar]

This is a great project, but it's a bit crazy when break into the sea. And it will be difficult without the support of anyone from the government.

Blue Frontiers is cooperating with the French Polynesian government to create a Special Economic Zone in one of their lagoons.

They are also in talks with several other nations.

[actuealth]

This is a great project, but it's a bit crazy when break into the sea. And it will be difficult without the support of anyone from the government.

Blue Frontiers is cooperating with the French Polynesian government to create a Special Economic Zone in one of their lagoons.

They are also in talks with several other nations.

Good to hear that there's some Government underwriting, or otherwise supporting (through Special Economic Zone setup), this enterprise. But, doesn't that conflict.with the basic libertarian (non-government) ethos?

[Elwar]

This is a great project, but it's a bit crazy when break into the sea. And it will be difficult without the support of anyone from the government.

Blue Frontiers is cooperating with the French Polynesian government to create a Special Economic Zone in one of their lagoons.

They are also in talks with several other nations.

Good to hear that there's some Government underwriting, or otherwise supporting (through Special Economic Zone setup), this enterprise. But, doesn't that conflict.with the basic libertarian (non-government) ethos?

Right now there are zero seasteads. The goal for libertarians is having seasteads in international waters. If we can take a step in that direction with a cooperative government then that's what needs to be done.

As I have learned with this project, it's not so much a libertarian project as it is a project where we can start a government from a clean slate. Sure, libertarians will be content if the slate stays clean, but it opens up the opportunity to try all sorts of different types of governments that have never been seen before. Maybe a completely blockchain based government. Maybe we try out some old systems that worked until they didn't, but learn from the past. Who knows?

We need to build these things. And that likely means building it on land. All land in the world is controlled by governments.

We'll be doing the same thing in space but nobody is complaining to rocket companies that they are following Earth laws when they build their rockets.

[iluvbitcoins]

"Do you have Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) ?
Yes. "

Is this only for the ICO?
I hope it's not connected with the seasted o.o

I saw this project some time ago, immediately closed it since it was an ICO and I thought they're just going to run away with the money
I am interested right now, will do some research on Varyon

---

There was an interesting thread some time ago bryant.coleman ran
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=556831

[Elwar]

"Do you have Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) ?
Yes. "

Is this only for the ICO?
I hope it's not connected with the seasted o.o

I saw this project some time ago, immediately closed it since it was an ICO and I thought they're just going to run away with the money
I am interested right now, will do some research on Varyon

---

There was an interesting thread some time ago bryant.coleman ran
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=556831

The KYC/AML for the ICO is due to the fact that the token could potentially be considered a security by the SEC down the road so we're approaching the ICO conservatively following all of the rules we would follow if we were selling securities just in case. But we're trying to create it as a currency that will be used on the seastead.

KYC won't really be a thing on the seastead (depending upon the governance of whichever platform you're on).

It is definitely not set up to run away with the money. The initial raise is relatively small with a large reserve. This allows for getting just enough money to get the ball rolling, then they have to deliver on promises to keep the value of the varyon up in order to be able to utilize the reserves for building future platforms. It is in the company's best interest to deliver what they promise.

The pre-sale ended last week with the raise about 80% of the way to the soft cap. That is a pretty good floor going into the main sale. Especially with a bull market returning.

[buwaytress]

Sorry for the almost necropost, but just saw this piece of news about Elwar and Summergirl. There's a photo and more reports, but this is probably the first one online: https://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30367834

If it's true that Elwar's in hiding, whatever our opinions about seasteading, we've got a Bitcoin early adopter and someone who actually did something about seasteading. Let us hope he's okay, and that this plays out in a just and appropriate way.

[Felisk99]

Sorry for the almost necropost, but just saw this piece of news about Elwar and Summergirl. There's a photo and more reports, but this is probably the first one online: https://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30367834

If it's true that Elwar's in hiding, whatever our opinions about seasteading, we've got a Bitcoin early adopter and someone who actually did something about seasteading. Let us hope he's okay, and that this plays out in a just and appropriate way.

Thanks for sharing this article, i'm doing research about seasteading for school. The article though is terrifying, hope that those people won't get hurt fleeing.

[Kemarit]

Sorry for the almost necropost, but just saw this piece of news about Elwar and Summergirl. There's a photo and more reports, but this is probably the first one online: https://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30367834

If it's true that Elwar's in hiding, whatever our opinions about seasteading, we've got a Bitcoin early adopter and someone who actually did something about seasteading. Let us hope he's okay, and that this plays out in a just and appropriate way.

Yep, it's all over the P&S as of late and I hope that Elwar and his Thai girlfriend are doing ok. I really don't know what the Thai government suddenly thinks that Elwar is a threat specially his pet project about seasteading. Threat to national security? WTF is that? And this news suddenly flips the whole seasteading thingy around the world.

[eternalgloom]

@buwaytress

Almost can't believe that the Thai government did end up going after them, I can definitely understand them going into hiding, you do not want to end up in a Thai jail.

Jeez (quoted from the article you've shared):

Whoever does any act with intent to cause the country or any part thereof to descend under the sovereignty of any foreign state, or to deteriorate the independence of the state, shall be punished with death or imprisonment for life.

Better check where you build your seastead and avoid countries that still have draconian laws like these.

[buwaytress]

@eternalgloom yeah it's still a little bit extreme, I'm from SEA and I know our jails are really not where you want to end up at (except Singapore maybe) so he at least is doing the safe thing. I'd thought he'd done all the homework already and if the Navy had an issue, surely it would have happened earlier? Perhaps there's more to the story than we know, but

That said, almost none of the death sentences in my country other than for drug-related offences or murder, have ever been carried out despite being enshrined by constitution, and the same with Thailand and Indonesia. It's only in China where capital punishment for corruption is regularly carried out.

Still, he better get a good lawyer. I'm still wondering why now though. It's really not funny. This wasn't the first seasteading project Bitcoiners have been involved in either.

[shield132]

Since bitcoin's prise is almost 3x higher than it was at the time when theymos created this thread, is this idea still in review?

What do you think theymos? Or are you waiting for another halving(s)?

[Elwar]

Since bitcoin's prise is almost 3x higher than it was at the time when theymos created this thread, is this idea still in review?

What do you think theymos? Or are you waiting for another halving(s)?

The fact is that most people see seasteading as this dream world that they will move to and every one of their dreams will come true. It will be free and you will be rich flying your personal flying car from seastead to seastead spending every night watching the sun set with free cocktails and free food. A perpetual vacation where you also have every convenience of home without all of the difficulties.

The reality is that you are trading government control on land for freedoms that you are likely not prepared to handle, all while living on a sea that is not a calm sheet of glass but a powerful force that makes life ten times more difficult than living on land.

I'm not saying it's not possible because I have lived it. But it is certainly not for everyone. If you would have been one of the families crossing the cold tundra of Montana by wagon the first time with savages, wild animals and cold likely killing off half of your family while finding your new freedom then you could handle early seasteading.

I have found that most people would rather dream of seasteading or wait for others to be the pioneers and work out all of the kinks before they're ready to go visit once in a while (only to return to their current lives).

We gave people a glimpse of a future seastead with the cruise ship, Satoshi, with prices starting at $25,000 and the only responses were how it was not this utopia that they had dreamed about with the large 2500 sqft homes they are used to at home but on the sea, with a garden and flying cars. And, oh no, it's not in your back yard...it's far away in a different country.

The idea of the super megastructure seastead is impossible. We bought the cruise ship at less than scrap prices meaning the price of the steel alone was more valuable than the ship. We weren't even trying to make much of a profit allowing us to offer cabins for $25k but this was still too much for people (the cabin is too small! I can't live there!). To actually build a super megastructure seastead would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Likely with the same sized living spaces costing at least half a million dollars (notice all of seastead designs of all of that open public space for walking around or lounging in the park...not based around high capacity living spaces).

Unfortunately we need to take baby steps to help people understand that living on the ocean is possible (it's already possible...just look at people living in their sailboats). We are building floating homes in a sheltered marina so people can have a "taste" of seasteading without all of those difficult inconveniences like needing to protect your home from pirates or navies or making the day long trip to the grocery store or clinging onto the walls during a bad storm, wondering if you're going to survive the night.

We already have enough orders for about a year of production but if you're interested in checking out what is being created here is what's being built in Panama:
https://oceanbuilders.com

There are some other projects but few are outside of the design stage.

We will be building more advanced homes for the open ocean but they will cost over $1 million for a select few people we would want as neighbours in an undisclosed location.