Multimillionaires can have really strange plans to spend their money. In October of 2020, the dream of a group of tycoons was crushed after it crashed into a bureaucratic iceberg and the Satoshi nightmare took place. It all started as an idea back in 2010, when Patri Friedman, a former engineer from Google talked about using areas from the sea to build free new societies where technology development was the center of everything.
From the moment that idea became popular, many people felt really interested in turning it into a true thing, such as Patri’s grandson, Milton Friedman, who happens to be one of the most important free-market economists in the world. Milton, along with Peter Thiel — the founder of PayPal, promoted the idea by financing different foundations to finally build the civilization of their dreams, and the Seasteading Institute was founded.
There were many tryouts in different places like San Francisco’s coast, but their actual proper tryout was in French Polynesia when they settled on a floating island that only lasted a year before it collapsed. That is when another sea enthusiast joined the team. Grant Rodmundt had the idea, more like an obsession, of sailing through the sea in order to finally find the perfect spot for the city of their dreams.
Another company was founded, Ocean Builders. It was the project of a group of bitcoin millionaires that partnered up with Rodmundt. Ocean Builders financed the building of an exclusive beach of 12 villages near the coast of Thailand. However, the government of Thailand didn’t allow the finishing of the project.
Later they tried the same, this time in Panama, where the SeaPod project was approved, and the buildings of houses 10 feet above the water. Finally, at the beginning of 2020, the first prototypes were settled.
Still, each house required a lot of time, work, and materials, so they decided it was better to buy a cruise that would do the job of a residence. They took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to find a big deal on a cheap cruise called the Pacific Dawn.
This cruise was renamed Satoshi in honor of the creator of Bitcoin and was planned to be communicated with the future floating community through underwater tunnels. Now, they had to take the cruise to Panama.
What they thought was going to be the solution to all of their problems, ended up being the detonate component to the end of the project. They couldn’t keep the expenses of the cruise, and there were a lot of bureaucratic issues that they couldn’t take care of and the utopian society ended.
