Something tremendous is going on in a quiet coastal city on the Caribbean Sea island. Crypto millionaires and those who hope to become one in the nearest future, migrate to build the city of future — city where only cryptocurrency is used, all contracts are smart, and unicorns are wandering the narrow cozy streets. They want to create transparent financial environment with the implementation of the latest technological achievements. And to avoid taxes. But this is, of course, in the second turn. As they say.
Newly arrived planned to name city “Puertopia”, but someone told them that it translates from Latin as “eternal boy playground” (chances are, it was a joke, but Google Translator didn’t help us to clarify the situation, so we cannot affirm with certainty). Anyway, future fathers-founders of crypto city took it seriously and renamed it into “Sol” (which is translated as “Sun” from the Latin).
The idea of creating territory where crypto is the king has been in the air for quite a long. The perfect option was found in Puerto Rico, where unprecedented conditions for new crypto citizens are offered: no federal personal income tax, no capital gains tax and low business taxes — without necessity to change American citizenship as Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory. After Hurricane Maria, that devastated Puerto Rico in September 2017, prices for real estate here are extremely low, providing immense opportunities for successful investments. Now newly arrived crypto enthusiasts are combing through the city looking for the property or land to buy.
Newcomers still haven’t decided what the plan is: to build a completely new city from scratch or just move to the old San Juan. Part of the crypto enthusiasts’ team wants to buy 250,000 acres of spare land to create a crypto town, but not everybody agrees with such idea. While they haven’t decided where to found a city and are not settled yet, future Puertopians occupied the Monastery, spacious hotel, that was unaffected by hurricane. Their huge capitals and low prices for real estate in Puerto Rico allows them to buy up hotels and museums in historical part of town. Newly arrived crypto enthusiasts assure that government is well-disposed towards their project and will allow them to open first crypto bank in the nearest future.
Most of newcomers (if not all of them, there is no accurate statistics yet) are men. Men with money found a city on a tropical island in the Caribbean sea. Looks like creating “a city of future” is just an occasion to create a city of bachelors and live happily ever after. But they insist they want to promote cryptocurrency and blockchain-related technologies, and nothing besides that.
Meantime locals are puzzled, wandering what to do with inflow of unusual arrivals. Some of them see it as a chance to make money, that crypto millionaires will certainly spend here. Some of them don’t like the experiments, that, in case of failure, may have a negative effect on the city’s economy. While this may sound like a paradise for crypto investors, many citizens are concerned with such drag of attention. Concentrating on cryptocurrency may end up in decline of other industries. If idea fails, people who dreamt about building a sunny city Puertopia, will just move back, leaving city desolated and devastated.
There are a lot of questions about this project. One of them: is there any sense in promoting technology that requires huge amount of electricity in the city, where power outage is a are constant problem? Even if investors don’t plan to mine intensively, stable electricity is required to keep system maintained.
Secondly, will there be any real assistance to the Puerto Ricans? Won’t it end up as the classical situation when rich become richer and poor become poorer?
The purpose of the project is also not quite clear. How will it improve the position of cryptocurrency and contribute to its development? Those who are already engaged in crypto business will continue to increase their funds in the Sol, while those who don’t see crypto as a true currency that has a future (and that is a lot of people) will continue to use fiat. It looks a lot like Las Vegas for crypto rich so they won’t get bored.
But, looking from the other side, we can see, that it is a real chance for Puerto Rico to get funding to restore infrastructure and economy after hurricane Maria, the strongest storm in 85 years. New citizens come with money which they are ready to spend. The leader of this movement is Brock Pierce, former child actor, who then discovered the entrepreneur talent and became engaged (and, we must admit, successfully engaged) in the cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. According to him, crypto enthusiasts are moving to Puerto Rico not to dodge taxes, but to show people the crypto future in its best.
Also newcomers have plans to improve city’s infrastructure and reorganize the way it works. Matt Wiggins, one of the participants, calls the project “a humanist revolution”. Future citizens of Sol don’t plan to concentrate only at cryptocurrency and blockchain, but also want to incentivize usage of renewable energy, taking care of water and electricity waste and encourage native communities to grow their own food.
City, where the latest technologies are not only accepted, but not controlled and regulated, creates favourable environment for further development of blockchain-related ideas. It would be a perfect example — mini-version — of what would the world be like when all financial and legal operations would be conducted using blockchain and other latest technological achievements. And no matter whether this project will be successful or not, it is an interesting experiment to see cryptocurrency and blockchain in everyday use — we can learn a lot from it.
