Bitcoin Island

[phelix]

only missing a large bitcoin logo 

[acoindr]

Let's just buy an old ship. Much cheaper, more convenient, suitable to many different biz at once, and infinitely more amusing.


Pirate Ship Black Raven by Mr. T in DC, on Flickr

A ship would be more amusing, but not more comfortable. I guess it depends which is preferable. I started imagining possibilities for the island... I can see it now: an inviting Casino by the water hosted by StrikeSapphire, cocktail waitresses, courtesy of GirlsGoneBitcoin, in white t-shirts with a golden Bitcoin symbol splashed across their chests. Exciting 24 poker tournaments from SealWithClubs....

I think it could be a good thing  


But @mollison has some good points. I like to think @benjamindees's heart is in the right place, but I would prefer a more thoughtful approach too. There is nothing wrong with a blank canvas and crowdsourcing input, but that's for the theoretical side. When moving on to the practical side it should get more organized. Some sort of corporate structure with fiduciary responsibility to shareholders seems natural.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

You do realize that 5 acres is not very big.

This is a building with 5 acres under roof:



The following is a small 25 acre resort with condos:



My home sits on one acre of land, as do the the two homes east of me and the two homes west of me. That's five acres. If somebody yelled from the corner of the second house to the left, another person would have no problem hearing it at the opposite corner of the second house on the right.

From the looks of the images on eBay, you have a handsome home surrounded by a landscaped property. Not much room there to build anything else.

Hope I put this into some perspective. (I'm not dissing the idea, but...)

To paraphrase a line in "Jaws": We need a bigger island!

~Bruno~

[benjamindees]

It's not very big, no.  But most large Caribbean islands are basically glorified sandbars.  5 acres is big enough to be self-sufficient and accommodate a bunch of different interesting uses.

This one nearby is similar, and 9.5 acres:
http://www.privateislandsonline.com/lime-cay.htm

This one is 25 acres, but is a Wildlife Preserve:
http://www.privateislandsonline.com/isla-parida-panama.htm

33 acres, not a bad deal actually:
http://www.privateislandsonline.com/grenell-and-horseshoe-caye.htm

[Phinnaeus Gage]

It's not very big, no.  But most large Caribbean islands are basically glorified sandbars.  5 acres is big enough to be self-sufficient and accommodate a bunch of different interesting uses.

This one nearby is similar, and 9.5 acres:
http://www.privateislandsonline.com/lime-cay.htm

This one is 25 acres, but is a Wildlife Preserve:
http://www.privateislandsonline.com/isla-parida-panama.htm

I vote for the 25 acre Wildlife Preserve, that way we can all feel right at home.

The wildlife consists of white faced and howler monkeys, wild puerco, parrots, toucans, and plenty of ocean critters.

[tvbcof]

I got an instant visual image of that midget guy from the 70's movies with MagicTux's head.  Too bad I'm not handy with photoshop.

[tvbcof]

...
My home sits on one acre of land, as do the the two homes east of me and the two homes west of me. That's five acres. If somebody yelled from the corner of the second house to the left, another person would have no problem hearing it at the opposite corner of the second house on the right.
...

Internet access on the island not good enough for web cam?  No problem...just use binoculars.

[benjamindees]

From the looks of the images on eBay, you have a handsome home surrounded by a landscaped property. Not much room there to build anything else.

No, no, that's not right.  Look at the map.  Five acres is much more than just that.  The pics don't show all of it.

Besides, just for perspective, you know what else sits on one acre?  The Burj al Arab.

[herzmeister]

The wildlife consists of white faced and howler monkeys, wild puerco, parrots, toucans, and plenty of ocean critters.

The Secret of Bitcoin Island

[Elwar]

I have considered something like this for a long time.

Crowd funding something.

The idea would be to have a type of club where you purchase membership by contributing Bitcoins.

The Bitcoin wallet where all of the Bitcoins sit would require a key from each member in order for it to be spent.

Once the right opportunity comes along and enough BTC is accumulated, then the members of the club all enter their keys and the BTC gets transferred.

The main thing I cannot figure out is if one person wants to sabotage the project they can get their key and hold it over everyone else to either destroy the club or to use it as a bargaining chip to get the money released. The only solutions to this would be situations where not everyone who contributed gets what they want.

Simple solution just make it an n of m multi-sig address.  Set n to be something reasonable which still makes members feel safe like say 80%.

Yes, I thought of that. But the 20% that do not agree would be forced to have their money spent on something they do not want. I suppose it could work if you set up a way to send the money back to those who do not want what the final decision is. Perhaps the 80% threshold gets hit and then the BTC gets transferred toward the purchase and the other 20% goes to those addresses that did not agree on the final decision.

Very easy to do that and do it completely anonymously but it does require a little trust that the refund will be honored.
1) Setup an multi-sig address for the initial contributors (lets say there are 20 of them)
2) Everyone must contribute from an address which can receive payments back (i.e. no ewallets other than ones like StrongCoin).
3) So all 20 initial contributors have paid into the multi-sig address (16 are required to sign a tx).

Now if new contributors come along you simply create a new multi-sig address (i.e. 18 of 22) have the new contributors make their pledge deposit, and have current contributors sign a tx to forward funds to the new address.   

When a potential purchase is found call a vote.  Vote can be verified by having members sign their vote w/ private key of their deposit address.

The options are:
Vote Yes
Vote No (refund if vote passes)
Vote No (contribute anyways if vote passes)

If the vote fails to gain 80% approval then nothing happens.
If the vote does gain 80% approval then create a multi-sig tx paying from all the addresses which agree and refunding all the addresses which don't.  All members can verify the tx and sign it.  Once it has 80% of signatures the tx is valid and funds will be dispersed.

The trust comes with the last step.  Members "could" once they have 80% of signatures forward all funds (even of those who object) and refund nothing.  Since they have 80% of the keys the minority can't prevent that.  I don't believe multi-sig can remove that element of trust.

Answered in separate thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=82350.0

[Realpra]

Very cool.

I have actually experimented with a floating island design (floathaven .com).

Its still in the prototype phase so I wont accept money from anyone, but once ready I think we can churn out land for about 20$/m^2.

You guys should look into the seasteading movement, very BTC like.

[MoneyIsDebt]

How about building an underwater city ala Bioshock?
Or an aircraft carrier ala Snowcrash?

[MoonShadow]

How about building an underwater city ala Bioshock?
Or an aircraft carrier ala Snowcrash?

I've never played Bioshock.  I'd tried to read Snowcrash, but just couldn't get into it like I did with Cryptocromicon, System of the World & The Diamond Age. 

Why an aircraft carrier?  Those are particularly uncomfortable ships.  How about a cruise ship?

Until something dramatic is found on the ocean's floor to justify the expense, a city underwater is actually less likely from an economic perspective than one on the Moon.  At least a moonbase would verifiablely have H3 to collect for export.  There is probably nothing else on the moon of any particular scarcity to ever justify a moonbase economicly.  Bitcoin mining in the dark craters of the moon would have free cooling and continuous solar power for two weeks at a time, though.

[MoonShadow]

From the looks of the images on eBay, you have a handsome home surrounded by a landscaped property. Not much room there to build anything else.

No, no, that's not right.  Look at the map.  Five acres is much more than just that.  The pics don't show all of it.

Besides, just for perspective, you know what else sits on one acre?  The Burj al Arab.

Five acres is very small.  Are we sure it isn't in hectares?

[acoindr]

From the looks of the images on eBay, you have a handsome home surrounded by a landscaped property. Not much room there to build anything else.

No, no, that's not right.  Look at the map.  Five acres is much more than just that.  The pics don't show all of it.

Besides, just for perspective, you know what else sits on one acre?  The Burj al Arab.

Five acres is very small.  Are we sure it isn't in hectares?

A hectare is 2.471 acres, so that would make it 12.355 acres, which still seems small. I think we need something at least 25 acres.

[rastapool]

In January 2010 Wirtland proposed to acquire land by consent from Nauru. If successful, it would be the first case of a peaceful formation of a new country 'from scratch', making Wirtland potentially eligible for international diplomatic recognition according to Article 1 of Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, provided that it can also meet the requirements of a "permanent population" under the control of a government.

What do you think? How about new free country/free town/free bitcoin island?

[acoindr]

In January 2010 Wirtland proposed to acquire land by consent from Nauru. If successful, it would be the first case of a peaceful formation of a new country 'from scratch', making Wirtland potentially eligible for international diplomatic recognition according to Article 1 of Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, provided that it can also meet the requirements of a "permanent population" under the control of a government.

What do you think? How about new free country/free town/free bitcoin island?

More info on Wirtland:

http://grou.ps/witizens/videos/1266229 (video Fox45 News)

http://www.wirtland.com/ (home page)

Well, it's certainly interesting and I think Bitcoin, the first real Internet currency, should certainly be the official currency of Wirtland, the first country that exists only on the Internet.

Apparently, their population is 2,031 as of 1/11/2011. Adding bitcoiners and Libertarians into the mix could certainly boost that, but I do think soil is needed. Seasteading, as mentioned earlier in the thread, looks interesting too:

Seasteading is the concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called seasteads, outside the territory claimed by the government of any standing nation.

What we really need is to combine all three of these: Bitcoin + Wirtland + Seasteading = Awesome?

[Phinnaeus Gage]

In January 2010 Wirtland proposed to acquire land by consent from Nauru. If successful, it would be the first case of a peaceful formation of a new country 'from scratch', making Wirtland potentially eligible for international diplomatic recognition according to Article 1 of Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, provided that it can also meet the requirements of a "permanent population" under the control of a government.

What do you think? How about new free country/free town/free bitcoin island?

More info on Wirtland:

http://grou.ps/witizens/videos/1266229 (video Fox45 News)

http://www.wirtland.com/ (home page)

Well, it's certainly interesting and I think Bitcoin, the first real Internet currency, should certainly be the official currency of Wirtland, the first country that exists only on the Internet.

Apparently, their population is 2,031 as of 1/11/2011. Adding bitcoiners and Libertarians into the mix could certainly boost that, but I do think soil is needed. Seasteading, as mentioned earlier in the thread, looks interesting too:

Seasteading is the concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called seasteads, outside the territory claimed by the government of any standing nation.

What we really need is to combine all three of these: Bitcoin + Wirtland + Seasteading = Awesome?

BINGO!

Yesterday, I was thinking about Googling to see if such a place exist. After reading your post earlier today, I've pondered our obtions during the course of the rest of the day. I've visited the site, and look what I found--their forum. It's pretty huge, therefore I was only able to take a screen shot of it.



I've got something up my sleeve and, if we do this right, I believe we can bring further awareness to Bitcoin. Watch for my next thread.

~Bruno~

[ssaCEO]

How 'bout this one? It's only $31M... just about the value of all the Bitcoins in circulation


Comes with a casino, and yes, StrikeSapphire would happily host the game and beverage concession. Connectivity might be a little tough out there, considering how expensive satellite links are, but maybe one of the European pirate parties would go 50/50 on it and help set it up as a little offshore data haven, to help subsidize the costs. And then of course you need a captain and crew, and possibly some kind of defensive armaments, considering the number of real pirates out there these days.

http://www.yachtingbrokers.com/640_cruise_ship_for_sale.html

[MoneyIsDebt]

Question about seasteading: Just because nobody claims a territory currently, doesn't mean they won't in the future. And then it's your army against theirs. I'd think a ship (being mobile) would be a better option. You'd need a solid internet connection for bitcoining though...