A group of crypto-enthusiasts chose the state of Puerto Rico to build their city - a "crypto utopia". The correspondents of The New York Times went to see how they were doing.
Eternal boy playground
They called their creation Puertoopia. However, then someone told them, ostensibly in all seriousness, that from Latin it is translated as "eternal boy playground". So now the Puerto Rican crypto town has a new name - Sol.
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Dozens of entrepreneurs who got rich on the boom of blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, this winter massively directed their stops in Puerto Rico. They sell their homes and cars in California become residents of this Caribbean island hoping to avoid, as they say, the hardships of federal taxes for their wealth, some of which reach billions of dollars.
And these men (since almost all of them are men) have a plan to dispose of their money: they want to build a "cryptoutopia", a new city where money is virtual and all contracts are public, to show the world what a crypto future can look like. Blockchain, the distributed registry, by which all digital money is created, is capable of irreversibly changing the familiar society - and the Puerto-Pians want to prove this in practice.
More than a year, entrepreneurs were looking for a suitable place. After Hurricane Maria destroyed the infrastructure of Puerto Rico in September, and the price of the cryptocurrency began to grow at a tremendous rate, they saw a new opportunity.
As a result, this crypto community has flocked here to create its paradise. Now investors day after day are looking for suitable sites where they could build their airports and ship docks. They bought the hotels and the museum in the historic district of the capital, called Old San Juan. They say that they are in a couple of steps from getting the approval of the local government to open the first crypto bank.
There was an ideal combination of circumstances. Although it was awful for the people of Puerto Rico, in the long term it became a heaven's gift.
- says the founder of the CNET news site, Halsey Minor, whose new Videocoin detachment will also move from the Cayman Islands to Puerto Rico this winter.
The country attracts businessmen awesome tax conditions: no federal taxes on personal profit and profitable taxes for business - all this without renunciation of US citizenship. Currently, the local government is friendly towards cryptoutopists. In March, the governor will even speak at their blockbuster summit called Puerto Crypto
Information Source: The New York Times
