Bitnation, or cryptonation, is a "voluntary nation" that records vital records, identity and other legal events using blockchain technology. Bitnation was founded in 2014 using Ethereumsmart contract technology. As of 2018, it has about 15,000 "citizens". Its 2018 whitepaper describes Bitnation as "the world's first Decentralized Borderless Voluntary Nation." Bitnation organized the world's first Blockchain Marriage and World Citizenship ID, Blockchain Land Title, Birth Certificate and Refugee Emergency ID during 2014 and 2015.
Etymology and terminology
The term bitnation consist of the wordsbit and nation. It is a government-centric analog to the virtual currency bitcoin that also applies blockchain technology.
History
Background
Bitnation founder Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof grew up in a Franco-Swedish family where her father had been stateless for a decade. As a defense contractor working in the Middle East, she witnessed what she considered unethical and non-sustainable governance during the Arab Spring. The incorporation between Blockchain technology and its proof-of-work core product Bitcoin inspired her to extend its products into education and national security, which gradually evolved into the backbone concepts of the modern startup company Bitnation.
Founding
Bitnation was founded July 14, 2014 by Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof. An early whitepaper describing the Bitnation concept and laying out a political justification was written largely in late 2014 and finished in March 2016 by Tempelhof and co-drafter Jason M. Farrell. A second paper articulating the Pangea jurisdiction and supporting technologies was written by Tempelhof, Eliot Teissonierre, James Fennell Tempelhof and Dana Edwards and released in early 2018. Per the white paper, its stated purpose is to "free humankind from the oppression and sanction of pooled sovereignty, geographical apartheid and the xenophobia and violence that is nurtured by the Nation State oligopoly."
Media
Bitnation was the subject of a Vice piece in September 2016 wherein the author noted that "because a nation is as much an ideological concept as it is a legal one, one strength of Bitnation lies in its ability to give agency to groups who have been ignored or repressed by modern nation-states." The International Business Times noted Bitnation is "sure to change the conversation about tangible blockchain solutions for global problems like a refugee crisis." The Atlantic noted in February 2018 "Bitnation proposing a 'peer-to-peer voluntary governance system' to replace the arbitrariness of birth as the decider of one’s citizenship. Blockchain governance could allow for the creation of virtual citizenship and autonomous communities distinct from territorial nation-states." Bitnation also received notable coverage in The Economist and The Wall Street Journal for its experimental work in using blockchain technology to solve the migrant crisis.
