A decade in, Liberland needs the Bitcoin standard more than ever
The Balkan micronation went from Bitcoin economy to blockchain buzzwords in 10 years
Bitcoin and Aerra Carnicorn modified by Blockworks | Aerra Carnicom/"CGI Liberland Flag" (CC license)
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Liberland has fallen.
It’s a tale almost as old as Bitcoin itself. One day, you’re buying just a little bit of bitcoin. Stacking sats on Saturdays.
Suddenly, you mistakenly catch a glimpse of a video about stablecoin yield in your feed. The algorithm’s fault.
Then, a screenshot of generational memecoin gains. A string of governance airdrop tweets follow fast; farmers rich, KOLs richer. You? Fully FOMO’d.
Congratulations! You’ve been radicalized by the Web3 cabal.
All of your remaining bitcoin has been reallocated to the top 50 altcoins, weighted by their respective partnerships and memorandums of understandings. “E/acc” has been unironically added to your X handle. WAGMI.
On This Day — Liberland goes Bitcoin
It’s enough to make you retch. After checking in on Liberland, the libertarian Balkan micronation founded in 2015, I fear it has suffered a similar fate.
It’s not that Liberland was ever exactly sold as a Bitcoin maximalist paradise. Established under Terra nullius rules, Czech politician and activist Vít Jedlička initially positioned the “three-square-mile teardrop of no man’s land” on the western bank of the Danube as a libertarian refuge for the entire world. A tiny sanctuary for “honest people,” free of big government, central banks and taxes.
It’s easy to see how bitcoin once fit into that vision. Bitcoin was, and still is, symbolic of what’s possible under laissez-faire capitalism — proof that people can change the foundational structures of our world by taking matters into their own hands.
And while there’s no “legal tender” of Liberland, bitcoin was indeed to be accepted as money within its border, alongside practically all other currencies, even an official Liberland cryptocurrency “like bitcoin” somewhere down the line, as Jedlička himself red-flagged in initial media appearances.
Perhaps Jedlička and Satoshi shared a kindred audacity. Liberland sounds like just as much of an impossible dream as Bitcoin once did.
After arrests, court battles, attempted settlements, festivals and temporary exiles, the Free Republic of Liberland today boasts more than 1,100 registered citizens, more than 4,000 e-residents, and over 700,000 applicants on their waiting lists. But as one report put it in 2023, very few Liberland citizens actually live there. Instead, there’s a “handful of activists moored downstream on a houseboat, under the close supervision of the Croatian police.”
But whatever spiritual overlap there was between Bitcoin and Liberland (which had attracted many to its remote European floodplain in the first place), it’s all but gone from its public messaging.
One might’ve expected the ties between Liberland and Bitcoin to strengthen over the past decade. Especially so, considering bitcoin is up nearly 200x since early reports suggested that Liberland held much of its reserves in BTC. That would surely have made the microstate relatively wealthy if true.
(For what it’s worth, Liberland’s known bitcoin address contains less than $2,000 worth of bitcoin right now but in total has seen 275 BTC inflows — $23 million at current prices. Liberland deposited its last bitcoin to crypto exchange Bitcoin Suisse in August 2020.)
Today, there is no “bitcoin” on Liberland’s official website, barring what seems to be a single mention about it being a preferred currency alongside Liberland’s own coin.
There’s blockchain governance, and then there’s blockchain government.
Instead, the worst of blockchain’s buzzwords now overrun Liberland.org: soulbound NFTs that represent citizenship, on-chain governance that enables “decentralized hyperdemocracy,” all powered by an “operational token similar to DOT or ETH,” which users can bridge to TRX, and a small number of other chains.
It took only 10 years for Liberland to go from an economy with Bitcoin at its base, as President Jedlička said in 2016, to an economy built around an inflationary governance token, Liberland Dollars, issued on a Polkadot fork called the Liberland Blockchain.
A secondary token, Liberland Merit, is meant to represent the ownership of the actual land. The site promises that one day, the tokens can be “converted into tokenized political power,” giving citizens additional avenues to vote.
Liberland’s Congress recently elected Justin Sun prime minister for the second time running.
As it stands, Liberland is essentially a token economy experiment for a blockchain-powered nation that doesn’t really exist. Yet.
Still, the government receives vested token unlocks every month to fund itself and its initiatives (which include paying for token listings on crypto exchanges, marketing and incentives) in much the same way as VCs do from their portfolio Web3 companies. The coin has a $2.1 million market cap right now.
Just as there are no true Scotsmen, there is, of course, no one true representation of “Bitcoiner.” And no doubt, there are many among Liberland residents, believers, supporters and investors.
All that only makes the current iteration of Liberland, with all of its mumbo jumbo, that much more of a letdown. Luckily, it’s never too late to adopt the Bitcoin standard — although good luck ever getting the votes.
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