Bitnation

History

Half-French, half-Polish Tarkowski Tempelhof was born and grew up in Gothenburg, Sweden. Her father was stateless for a decade, which made her question the legitimacy of the prevalent nation state system. She began writing on the topic of non-geographically contingent governance service aggregators in 2004. However, the idea seemed difficult to implement, hence she joined the US Department of Defence and US State Department as a contractor working in different conflict zones, for 7 years.

In 2012, after encountering Bitcoin for the first time, she began thinking that she could implement her idea. She worked on the idea of an international insurance company providing more services than just health insurance, but also things like education and security, through networks of local subcontractors. Initially she wrote about the phenomena and called it Googlements. In her research, she came to understand blockchain - the technology which Bitcoin is built upon - realizing that she could create the organization she envisaged without much of the start up costs an insurance like structure would have entailed. Subsequently, she started working on the project and called it Bitnation.

After an unsuccessful crowdsale, Bitnation was incorporated on the counterparty blockchain in late 2014.

Bitnation moved their equity to the ethereum blockchain in February 2016 The same month, the organization coded the world's first virtual nation constitution called Pangea. It was created in 140 lines of code during a 3 hour live session in Rio de Janeiro hosted by Tarkowski Tempelhof and the Ethereum developer Alex Van de Sande. In April 2016, Bitnation partnered with Liberland to provide the people of Liberland the services offered by Bitnation irrespective of where they are in the world at that time.

Services

Bitnation offers the same services as those provided by traditional governments, but in a geographically unbound way. Any individual from around the world can became a citizen of Bitnation by signing on to the constitution. Cryptoequity can be bought on cryptocurrency exchanges, or earned by contributing with work. The first version of the ID required users prove their existence at a certain time by taking a picture with the latest Bitcoin merkle root, or the hash of all the hashes of all the transactions in a block. Then the picture is inserted into an ID template and the documents are signed with PGP keys. Later forms of identification have been simplified, in the current Bitnation World Citizenship ID, as well as the Refugee Emergency ID.

Some contracts on Bitnation between citizens can be automatically enforced through tying the contracts to different accounts so that funds are automatically removed or restored dependent on the contract. There are no physical enforcement tools as of 2015. Bitnation uses an ID system based on reputation that serves as a deterrent. An individual needs reputation for all business deals. Those who do not have a reputation are hindered from a lot of things such marriage and land deeds on Bitnation.

Basic Income

In December 2014 Bitnation announced it was working with Johan Nygren’s resilience.me Basic Income protocol, built on a mututal insurance like structure.

Pangea Blockchain Jurisdiction

Bitnation released its Pangea Blockchain Jurisdiction software May 2015. The Alpha software was built on the Horizon blockchain, but later on shifted to the Ethereum Smart Contract technology.

Partnership with Estonia

In November 2015, Estonia announced its cooperation with Bitnation on their blockchain based public notary solution. Estonian e-residents can sign in using their physical ID card and perform digital signatures on the blockchain. Bitnation provides a P2P version of e-governance. This offers foreign people to become e-residents. This does not grant the same rights as resident in the traditional sense, but offers many facilities when dealing with the country.

As of December 2015, the blockchain notary service allows e-residents, regardless of where they live or do business, to notarise their marriages, birth certificates, business contracts on the blockchain.

Refugee Emergency Response

In November 2015, the virtual nation started the Bitnation Refugee Emergency Response (BRER) program in response to the refugee crises. This project provided an identification system called Blockchain Emergency ID (BE-ID). The BE-ID allowed a person to receive an ID recorded on the blockchain for those who cannot get other identification documents. With this ID, people were able to receive social assistance and financial services.

The ID form generated a QR code which could be used with a cellphone to apply for a Bitcoin Visa Card which could be used throughout Europe and the UK without a bank account. The cards allowed the refugees to accept transfers and donations from anywhere in the world, through a Bitcoin public address.

Additional services were also added including a map and a forum to track lost family members, safe locations and dangerous locations.

Decentralized Borderless Voluntary Nation (DBVN)

The Decentralized Borderless Voluntary Nation (DBVN) definition was first created and made public by Tarkowski Tempelhof in Bitnation’s Whitepaper October 2014, then launched, together with a constitution, on the Ethereum blockchain February 2016. The concept is based upon the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) concept, but tailored for Virtual Nation use, built to be integrated into the holonic Bitnation Pangea Jurisdiction.

Reception

Bitnation has received a lot of media coverage since it was launched. International Business Times wrote that "Bitnation is doing for identity and statehood, what Bitcoin is doing for money" and Telegraph commenting on the use of reputation system wrote that "it’s the pinnacle of libertarianism – a way of using technology to enforce agreement without reliance on a central power with a monopoly on force." Giulio Prisco has been a strong supporter of Bitnation who wrote that "Bitnation’s vision of future open societies is, in one word, awesome." In a 2016 U.N. working paper Brett Scott praised Bitnation’s work on blockchain-based land-titles. However, he criticised Bitnation’s vision of a future stateless society as "an extreme techno-libertarian position."

Frances Coppola, writing for Forbes in 2016 was critical of Bitnation calling it "Jonathan Swift’s island of Laputa, completely disconnected from the real world but extracting resources from it."

Controversies

In 2014 the company gained media attention when, just before the launch of the crowdsale, three members of the team left the organization with an open resignation letter. They published their resignation letters on Bitcoin Magazine claiming that their reason for leaving was the fact that the organization was not incorporated in a nation state jurisdiction. Tempelhof said that they were not coders or part of the core team and left because of differences in regulatory mindset.