This article is about a project called "Destiny" (https://destiny.com), an economic zone to be created in an undeveloped region of Nevis (of St. Kitts & Nevis)
The project goal is to become like Dubai with a 50m dollar investment, which I don't think is an admirable goal btw.
St Kitts & Nevis has had a history of being friendly to crypto and there was an initiative to make bitcoin cash legal tender, although don't think it ever actually happened.
> The project goal is to become like Dubai with a 50m dollar investment
Thanks, I needed a good laugh.
To "become like Dubai" they'd need at least another 3 orders of magnitude on that investment.
For reference, the university I worked at until last year recently renovated the building I was working in. It was a fairly standard-sized academic building for a small liberal arts campus—three stories, with roughly 3-8 classrooms on a side. The renovation was the replacement of its HVAC system, and adding a fairly small "bump-out" addition on one of the short sides, of roughly one medium-large classroom's width.
It cost $35 million.
$50 million would build maybe a couple of decent-sized buildings, or a handful of smaller ones. No skyscrapers. Nothing fancy.
Certainly nothing like Dubai.
(According to Wikipedia, when it was built, the Burj Khalifa alone cost $1.5 billion. With a "b".)
In 2014 it was Chile, in 2017 it was Honduras, then Colombia and El Salvador in the early 2020s. In Chile and Colombia they were coasting on tax authorities not pursuing them and relying on the cultural cachet of being thought-leading risk takers who were forward-thinking enough to take on a new frontier (remember this is when they started flying south for ayahuasca ceremonies). In the case of Honduras and El Salvador, they were setting up in tax-free zones (which is effectively a transfer of wealth from those outside of the zone to those inside). Notable that the periods of Chilean and Salvadorian history that these “libertarians” tend to celebrate were periods of political repression. I can’t imagine these ventures will be any different.
These projects obviously have limited success. I found it interesting to learn about a couple that were very successful, though.
1) the Republic of Venice from 7th to 18th centuries, basically a merchant-run state controlled by a tight circle of wealthy traders. Its whole setup revolved around safeguarding trade and property and staying clear of the Catholic church and European kings.
2) the Republic of Ragusa from 14th to 19th centuries, in what’s now Dubrovnik, run by a small group of merchant families. Strong focus on open commerce and neutrality, made early advances in public health and infrastructure and had its own privately funded healthcare and insurance, all paid for by trade profits
If you consider them libertarian projects they failed. That's the thing about libertarianism - to succeed it needs to reinvent stuff that it is so opposed to.
Venice and Ragusa (and Genoa) were oligarchic states, had laws, and used force to enforce these laws. Civic liberties were suspended or heavily restricted.
What, again? Neither of the "Bitcoin island" schemes ever happened. The seasteading people failed to convince anybody that living on an old anchored cruise ship just for a tax break was worth it. The Sea Pod didn't look survivable in a storm.
Red Rock Island in San Francisco Bay [1] is apparently for sale again. It was supposedly sold in 2025, but that deal may have fallen through. Nobody built anything on it. Five acres of rock with cliffs.
It's basically a mountain peak sticking out of water. It would take a lot of money and work to do something with it. At least as much as the Eagle's Nest [2], plus the costs of operating on an island.
Which means there are about a dozen people in the Bay Area who could afford it.
Theres a long history of these things being poorly thought out ideological projects by people with too much money and not enough understanding of the real world.
Curious to see the hilarous ways this new wave will fail in.
The recent citations are definitely interesting, but none of this is really new. I met with some VCs in the early 10s, and some of them talked about "free enterprise zones" in various areas in the region. Frankly, I'm a little surprised this isn't discussed more. Maybe because the need for "liberty" is less in the realm of bits & bytes for these developments, it is less publicized.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 39.6 ms ] threadThis article is about a project called "Destiny" (https://destiny.com), an economic zone to be created in an undeveloped region of Nevis (of St. Kitts & Nevis)
The project goal is to become like Dubai with a 50m dollar investment, which I don't think is an admirable goal btw.
St Kitts & Nevis has had a history of being friendly to crypto and there was an initiative to make bitcoin cash legal tender, although don't think it ever actually happened.
https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/bitcoin-c...
Thanks, I needed a good laugh.
To "become like Dubai" they'd need at least another 3 orders of magnitude on that investment.
For reference, the university I worked at until last year recently renovated the building I was working in. It was a fairly standard-sized academic building for a small liberal arts campus—three stories, with roughly 3-8 classrooms on a side. The renovation was the replacement of its HVAC system, and adding a fairly small "bump-out" addition on one of the short sides, of roughly one medium-large classroom's width.
It cost $35 million.
$50 million would build maybe a couple of decent-sized buildings, or a handful of smaller ones. No skyscrapers. Nothing fancy.
Certainly nothing like Dubai.
(According to Wikipedia, when it was built, the Burj Khalifa alone cost $1.5 billion. With a "b".)
1) the Republic of Venice from 7th to 18th centuries, basically a merchant-run state controlled by a tight circle of wealthy traders. Its whole setup revolved around safeguarding trade and property and staying clear of the Catholic church and European kings.
2) the Republic of Ragusa from 14th to 19th centuries, in what’s now Dubrovnik, run by a small group of merchant families. Strong focus on open commerce and neutrality, made early advances in public health and infrastructure and had its own privately funded healthcare and insurance, all paid for by trade profits
Venice and Ragusa (and Genoa) were oligarchic states, had laws, and used force to enforce these laws. Civic liberties were suspended or heavily restricted.
Red Rock Island in San Francisco Bay [1] is apparently for sale again. It was supposedly sold in 2025, but that deal may have fallen through. Nobody built anything on it. Five acres of rock with cliffs. It's basically a mountain peak sticking out of water. It would take a lot of money and work to do something with it. At least as much as the Eagle's Nest [2], plus the costs of operating on an island. Which means there are about a dozen people in the Bay Area who could afford it.
[1] https://www.latitude38.com/lectronic/red-rock-island-isan-fr...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kehlsteinhaus
These people could not be more comically despicable if they tried.
Also one of their "executives" is seemingly a teenager [0]
[0] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6866a3346a2532...
Theres a long history of these things being poorly thought out ideological projects by people with too much money and not enough understanding of the real world.
Curious to see the hilarous ways this new wave will fail in.