
A Cryptocurrency Millionaire Wants to Build a Utopia in Nevada - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/technology/nevada-bitcoin-blockchain-society.html
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newsbinator
Personally, I like seeing actions like this.

Even though the source of his funds may be questionable (FOMO?, robbing from
the uninformed?, luck timing the market?), he's not letting his funds sit
idle.

It's one man's personal moonshot.

If anybody is going to actively create a mini 21st century society that gets a
lot of things right, it's a crazy near-billionaire who bought 67,000 acres of
land and invests in a long-term team/plan to make use of it.

I'm very interested to see what happens.

~~~
donavanm
If only there were any previous comparable attempts we could learn from ...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_City,_California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_City,_California)

~~~
newsbinator
There's a solid chance the current attempt will end up as just another failed
planned city.

But that's what moonshots are all about.

If it were easy or likely to succeed, it would have been done 10 times
already.

Songdo's not doing as well as hoped either:
[https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/06/sleepy-in-songdo-
koreas...](https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/06/sleepy-in-songdo-koreas-
smartest-city/561374/)

But that's why we iterate and try again... or not "we" so much as bitcoin
semi-billionaires.

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breakyerself
This is what you get when lucky people think they're geniuses.

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willio58
I’m sorry but I find it hard to trust the competence of any person who creates
a company straight-up called “Blockchains”. Such a money grab. Imagine
starting Internet, LLC during the dotcom bubble.

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jdhn
>“This will either be the biggest thing ever, or the most spectacular crash
and burn in the history of mankind,” Mr. Berns said.

At least he knows that there's a significant chance that it won't succeed. I'm
also glad that somebody is doing something with their cryptocurrency millions,
even if that something is as pie in the sky as this.

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loceng
'“This will either be the biggest thing ever, or the most spectacular crash
and burn in the history of mankind,” Mr. Berns said.'

Based on nominative determinism -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism)
\- that someone recently referenced in another thread on HN, I think he might
already have the answer.

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speedplane
How to become a cryptocurrency millionaire: start off as a crypto currency
billionaire and buy a bunch of useless land in the desert.

~~~
newnewpdro
I can't imagine any land being _useless_. Even contaminated radioactive land
can probably be put to use as a place to store more hazardous waste or weapons
testing.

It never ceases to amaze me how dismissive people are of desert land.

This particular land is covered with vegetation, it's not even some barren
landscape of endless sand dunes. All he'd need to do is drill wells and build
out some PV arrays and it'd already be a place people could easily/affordably
build relatively comfortable, albeit simple, lives. Hardly useless.

I'd certainly prefer acres of such desert land over bitcoin of equal value.

~~~
speedplane
Sorry, but most desert land is pretty “useless”. You can’t grow crops, it’s
far from metropolitan centers, it’s hot. Unless there is buried oil like in
Saudi Arabia, or near a major city (eg Phoenix, Vegas), the land itself is
pretty “useless” in a resource extraction sense. Even solar panels need to be
relatively close to a substation that can handle it.

That said, the desert can still be beautiful to those the live there, and
spiritual to native Americans with history there.

So the desert is interesting and cool, but not necessarily lucrative.

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stephengillie
Subtitle tells the whole story:

> _A man spent millions on an enormous plot of land near Reno. Now he wants to
> build a community based on the blockchain technology introduced by Bitcoin._

He could have joined up with the Bitcoin mining group in Wenatchee WA, where
they spent millions building custom "mining pods" to house the ASICs.

~~~
CyberDildonics
I'm not sure what that has to do with this person planning a town.

~~~
stephengillie
They could have combined their similar goals and pooled their money.

~~~
CyberDildonics
What are their similar goals? This guy is planning a town, those other people
were doing crypto currency mining.

~~~
stephengillie
> _Every resident and employee will have what amounts to an Ethereum address,
> which they will use to vote on local measures and store their personal
> data._

Maybe repurpose the pods to hold ETH mining gear?

But you've caught me. I obviously don't know what I'm talking about.
Congratulations, CyberDildonics, you've won HN today!

~~~
CyberDildonics
I don't think anyone wins when someone adds nonsense to a thread that then
needs to be corrected.

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orasis
This will be an expensive lesson in water availability.

~~~
seattle_spring
They'll just use the blockchain.

~~~
Junk_Collector
Hydrocoin, whenever you want water simply open your tap and activate your
smartphone app to deposit coins to the local M.U.D. at a varying rate starting
at 1 coin / liter. As soon as the block chain completes proof of work your tap
will begin to flow. If attempting to get water at a time of high blockchain
volatility or transaction demand, please allow 12-48 hours for processing. It
is recommended not to use Hydrocoin during hours of peak operation such as
mornings or evenings due to expected load related delays.

However, I do like the ideal of literal bucket arbitrage.

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asynchrony
This is effectively funded by all the student loans and double mortgages that
FOMO drove people to trade real money for virtual commodities at the peak of
last year's bubble. I'm calling it. We have reached peak blockchain hysteria.
This is "if you build it they will come" on the blockchain.

~~~
tuesdayrain
Judging by the charts, peak blockchain hysteria was around December 2017.

~~~
asynchrony
The speculative pricing bubble and the hype around the technology are two
different things.

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pgruenbacher
if someone's gonna invest in these idealistic projects, I'd rather see someone
invest in tech cooperatives based on block-chain, or just employee
cooperatives in general.

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Arbalest
This headline screams non-article. I don't know how anyone who is not at least
a billionare hopes to make any sweeping changes (let alone a utopia) in any
context beyond a couple thousand people.

~~~
CyberDildonics
The article says that he has spent 300 million dollars and bought 67,000 acres
of land.

~~~
Arbalest
Land isn't automatically useful/valuable. It does need to be developed. If you
took the land area of a city, and then went out bush and asked how much it
cost for the same area, it would be pretty much peanuts. Yet land prices in
cities are orders of magnitude higher.

The land is really only the start, and I'm pretty damn sure you will need an
order of magnitude more money than that to develop it into something usable by
modern standards.

~~~
CyberDildonics
This is textbook moving goal posts. He has obviously spent plenty of money and
didn't spend all that on the land. I'm not if you are really trying to say he
spent 300 million on land, but that isn't what the article implies.

