Subnostr

How Bitcoiners Will Be Able to Afford a Large-Scale Seastead

This Nostr post is meant only to be a preliminary discussion point as to how our community will fundraise for what would surely be a multi-billion dollar project one day.

Let us first assume that the price of bitcoin, like Hal Finney originally predicted, is going to $10 million worth of today's value within our lifetimes. Plenty of folks feel this is highly unlikely, so this conversation is not for them yet.

From a $30k bitcoin to a $10m bitcoin is over 333X returns on what we could treat as a high-yield savings account for any funds we were to donate to this cause. 333 TIMES returns, probably within a decade, definitely within 2-3 decades. What better way to come up with the vast amounts of moulah needed to fund a bitcoin-friendly seasteading community?

Let's say we work on a serious proposal with blueprints and all that, and find out that a proper seastead that is self-sufficient, safe, and attractive to bitcoiners with wealth would cost us $5 Billion USD in today's dollars to build. (Totally spitballing here.) I mean really proper, such as having backups for the mining, desal, solar, wind, internet connections, hospital, food farming, mining, hotel, and marina repair shops. Everything we'd need to get a community of 500 or more people into the deep water.

If we wait until more people arrive and the tech is more feasible, that could be in 10, 20, or even 30 more years... But this rise in Bitcoin's price is a 1-time event that is happening in the present.

The last time such a valuable thing (gold) went from worthless to the world's reserve money in the eyes of the world, it took thousands of years! But today the internet is making hypermonetization happen in just a few short decades.

We really need to get started saving in a bitcoin fund soon, so we don't miss those sick 333x gains. $5 billion of today's dollars divided by 333 is only ~$15 million dollars, which is currently only 500 bitcoins. And that's at a $30k BTC, and it also doesn't factor in future growth of BTC after it reaches that value.

So therefore, I propose that we as a community need to save ~500 Bitcoins before it's too late, in order to fund a $5 billion seastead. This is a totally achievable goal, especially since so many bitcoiners are already seasteaders. The more bitcoin's price goes up, however, the more that number of bitcoins in savings needs to go up as well though. We really can't afford to wait!

Yes, this comes with other challenges, such as who we can trust to watch over the private keys and how we determine & execute maturity. It would also bring up the question of how we can incentivize people to do all the work like draw up proper blueprints, research technology and materials, onboard suppliers, find & coordinate the inhabitants, etc.

I'd argue that these problems all need solving no matter what approach we take, and having a large, publicly-auditable pool of bitcoins in our care would smooth these problems out nicely as it grows.

I don't have all the answers, but the problem of who to trust with the private keys seems obvious to me: We minimize the trust in any human, and put together a solid multisignature wallet with something like 10 keys that at least 8 of us would need to sign in order to spend any funds. The key bearers would be split between the folks who care the most about seasteading and the biggest donors. (Joe Quirk & Patri could likely get one each, and if huge coiners like Saylor got involved and donated 100 coins then they'd get one too, etc.) We'd have to get all those keys in place with sound recovery strategies for each and every key before we start loading the wallet with funds, of course.

And just in case this sounds a little too-long-term for some of you impatient folks, (myself included) we can always raise more than 500 Bitcoins. There are liberty lovers out there with literally thousands and thousands of coins and no way to spend them all in their lifetimes. (See: The Pineapple fund) Recruiting these folks to the Seasteading cause could make this an overnight reality.

Anyone have a better idea for fundraising?

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Discussion

Low Information Voter 2y ago

Look, that sounds workable.

But I'm wondering if a modernist, centrally-planned, all-eggs-in-one-basket approach is really best, or if a different, more incremental approach would suit this challenge better.

We could divide up the problems to be solved, and tackle them in parallel. (Yes, there are some that only emerge at scale).

The minimum viable product for a seastead might be "a floating marina in international waters, with its own physical infrastructure and administrative processes, managed in an organised but decentralised and voluntary manner".

Then we start breaking it down into what each of us can do with the skills and resources we have, what we need to come together to do, and how to engage others.