The nature and purpose of cryptocurrency have changed and evolved over the past 15 years of Bitcoin, and the decades of attempts before that to get a viable digital currency off the ground.
At present, with the price soaring so quickly and its popularity as part of exchange-traded futures and other more conventional stock market instruments, cryptocurrency is at present popular as a speculative asset, although with the potential to be used as currency with the help of streamlined crypto cards.
Crypto, despite the concept being decades old, is still relatively early, and time will tell what the state of decentralised finance will be when the dust finally settles and crypto markets become distinctly less volatile through maturity.
However, during particularly volatile boom periods for crypto, the limit seems to be the sky, and with that heady optimism in mind, the future of crypto and how it shapes both financial markets and society, in general, seem to have limitless potential.
It is the kind of atmosphere that sees a crypto investment influencer spend nearly £1m in Ether on an acre parcel of land on an island intended to become a cryptocurrency utopia and a shining beacon for the entire decentralised finance world to flock to.
It was not, and the bizarre concept and even stranger marketing were reflective of a very unique time for the crypto investing world.
The Hodlers Of Last Resort
The influencer in question was Kyle Chasse, an early adopter, investor and influencer in the blockchain space, famous for, amongst other advice, suggesting during the height of the NFT boom that you should always buy two just in case it surges in both financial and sentimental value.
He was one of the earliest people on board the Cryptoland project, a proposal to build a dedicated cryptocurrency nation where investors and developers could live, create, network and be a living beacon of success and progress for decentralised finance, web3 and the blockchain.
The concept is, in some respects, similar to the concept of seasteading, which involves constructing floating cities or creating autonomous states on small islands away from the control of national governments.
The promised island in question was the 575-acre crescent island Nanunu-i-cake, and the fact that as of 2024 it is still available to buy might potentially spoil how the rest of the story turned out.
The initial trailer for Cryptoland, a ten-minute animated proof-of-concept presentation initially released in November 2021, managed to raise more questions and answers, confusing people about the nature of the project and how it was intended to be funded.
Some early commentary on the pitch presentation, particularly after it went viral in early 2022, claimed that it was a metaverse island, possibly due to it being conflated with the similarly named metaverse platform Decentraland.
It was not. It was meant to be a real crypto island, and the project founders were ostensibly serious about the proposal, despite the video’s rather surreal presentation and abundance of references to somewhat colourful moments in the early days of cryptocurrency history.
There were plans in the now-deleted “Why Paper” for basic infrastructure to be delivered from mainland Fiji, such as waste disposal, electricity and water, with much of the island’s power provided by diesel generators.
The financials of the project were also brought into question. The intention was for the island’s $12m purchase to come from sales of “Cryptolanders” NFT tokens, with both a set of 10,000 tokens costing roughly $500 worth of ETH and a “King Cryptolander” token that conveys ownership of a plot costing between $800,000 and $1.2m.
Neither appeared to be enough to secure the island and two weeks after Cryptoland broke out of the crypto enthusiast space, The Guardian newspaper reported that the sale of the island had fallen through, putting all of the plans in serious doubt.
Ultimately the plans for the island were put on halt before being ended entirely by the changing circumstances in the cryptocurrency landscape, which created a domino effect that significantly reduced the value of crypto investments for two years, with NFTs struggling to rally in the way Bitcoin has managed.
The landscape for cryptocurrency has changed significantly since then, in ways that are better for the long-term future of cryptocurrency and worse for the rise of optimistic and ambitious projects such as Cryptoland.
The notion of building a seastead to allow blockchain and web3 developers to work away from world governments and established financial systems is a distant memory, but out of its ashes is a much more stable future for digital currency and fertile ground for strong rallies in tokens with strong fundamentals.