Rising movements to establish free, autonomous jurisdictions around the world are working alongside Bitcoin to establish parallel liberty.

This is an opinion editorial by Stephan Livera, host of the “Stephan Livera Podcast” and managing director of Swan Bitcoin International.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at

There were various technological and almost sci-fi ideas shared too, such as the use of drone delivery, helipads and intelligent voice assistants (that don’t “phone home” to Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.).

Separate from the SeaPod, there were also ideas presented on how to gradually create a community of like-minded seasteaders who would first get together in their boats in marinas around the world, and then slowly and gradually shift out in stages, the idea being to form connected floating platforms that permit freer markets out at sea, and to have the ability for people to join, leave or to reconfigure their components of the joint floating platform, all within a free market voluntary context.

Flag theorists

Of course, from the Libertarian world there is “flag theory” and we saw some consultancy services such as Katie The Russian’s Plan B Passport and Staatenlos’ talk about playing the geo-arbitrage game.

This could mean using various kinds of “flags”: citizenships, residencies, business structures, bank accounts, phone service, insurance and various other components to select from choices around the world — instead of being locked into one country. This crowd is, of course, very familiar with using Bitcoin as part of an overall strategy to gain freedom and generally they are comfortable transacting using bitcoin.

Bitcoiners

Of course there were bitcoiners present, too. I gave a talk about some practical tools and examples of people or organizations using Bitcoin as a parallel system.

We also saw some well-known Bitcoiners present and hosting a panel discussion on Madeira, an autonomous region of Portugal. Daniel Prince, Knut Svanholm, Andre Lojas, Jeff Booth (virtually), Greg Foss (virtually) and Lawrence Lepard (virtually) presented on the Free Madeira initiative.

And of course, while in town in Prague, the Bitcoiner crew visited Paralelní Polis, a unique organization known for promoting liberty, and crypto anarchy. There you can pay with bitcoin on chain or through Lightning!

Summing Up

These various projects and methods are additive and helping the overall cause of freedom. For example, the flag theorists are out there encouraging individuals to acquire additional residencies or passports and to play the jurisdictional arbitrage game, this helps reinforce the idea that countries or states have to compete with each other to attract talented individuals or businesses. The creation of new free cities projects also helps provide new opportunities. The seasteading efforts (though perhaps not my cup of tea), are still additive in providing new opportunities for people to express their desire for freedom and to choose a different jurisdiction.

Of course, most powerfully, Bitcoin has a big role to play in enabling these other projects and initiatives to operate, even in spite of fiat banking system resistance. We should all look to ways that we can act more freely, and grow our parallel financial system: Bitcoin.

This is a guest post by Stephan Livera. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.