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99 sats \ 15 replies \ @siggy47 5 Jan \ on: **The journey of a Bitcoin community on a small island. IslaBTC** BooksAndArticles

Thanks for this write-up. Questions- Without given away too much information, is the island isolated from the central government and more or less on its own? How's the infrastructure? Roads, sewage, electricity, internet?

Please keep posting updates. Great work!

74 sats \ 8 replies \ @gmd 5 Jan

Commendable but tbh this kind of stuff sounds so scary to me- would be a juicy target for enterprising pirates. Why attack ships or banks when you these guys are sitting ducks for a wrench attack.

66 sats \ 7 replies \ @siggy47 5 Jan

I expect that this is a modest community living pretty close to subsistence. I can't imagine there would be a gigantic bitcoin stash. Also, I would think cracking a lightning wallet on a phone would be a bit more challenging than raiding a town with businesses using a cash box.

53 sats \ 2 replies \ @gmd 5 Jan

A pirate wouldn't crack any wallet they would find the owners and cut their / family's fingers off one at a time until they transferred their life savings over.

Maybe not everyone is filthy rich and i'm sure a bunch do multisig but there's a much bigger upside betting on tropical island retirees than sticking up your local gas station. Local authorities probably not too helpful either.

78 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 5 Jan

Tropical island retirees? I don't know. Maybe there is something about this island I don't know. Is this a fancy place?

53 sats \ 0 replies \ @gmd 5 Jan

No clue but generally if you have the funds to escape a first world country to retire on a beach you're probably well into FIRE territory with a decent nest egg. If it's all in BTC then that's a nice target for a wrench attack.

Same reason people target professional athletes homes..

51 sats \ 3 replies \ @BTCLNAT OP 6 Jan

So that you can get an idea, a professional here can earn from 21k to 25k SAT per month. Of course, there are merchants who can invoice 1M SAT per month, mainly because they have relatives outside the country who support them. That is why, within the strategies for the development of a circular economy, it is about helping people understand that their relatives can make remittances from anywhere in seconds using LIGHTNING NETWORK and those SATs can be used to pay for goods and services to private merchants, who in the end are the ones who are sustaining the precarious economy here, without the intervention of the banking political system and without supervision through CBDCs, which predominate here for absolute control of the funds by the system to the citizens.

In general, when someone gets a significant stash here, they use it to ESCAPE FROM HERE, only those who live off THIS do not leave here and those of us who unfortunately do not have the money to do so. It takes 2.5M to 3M SAT to get out of here and get to Brazil. That is the recommended amount to open a good channel, for us it is the amount to open a trip out of here.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 6 Jan

That's what I thought.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @nym 6 Jan

I hope you find your escape!

24 sats \ 0 replies \ @BTCLNAT OP 6 Jan

I hope to escape too!

But until that time comes, I will continue to educate and help others learn about and adopt Bitcoin. True freedom wherever we are.

268 sats \ 5 replies \ @BTCLNAT OP 5 Jan

I appreciate your words. In reality, the island where I live is governed by the same laws as the entire archipelago, it is not like the China-Hong Kong relationship, which is a country with two systems.

The hydraulic infrastructure is regular with irregular water supply via aqueducts in populated areas, water wells in rural areas and a cistern and elevated tank system in adapted rural communities, which used to be internal educational centers and then were adapted to housing, something crazy but it is like that.

The electrical system is independent of the National Electric System (SEN), so when there are problems with the SEN, we do not have problems.

The internet has, to a certain degree, better features and connectivity than on the big island. So much so that I have been able to install and use, after the logical synchronization, the node wallets: Blixt, Breez and Zeus.

Due to the number of inhabitants and the grouped population settlements, we think that the development of a circular economy is more likely here than in the rest of the country.

We hope to have good news on this matter.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @chaoticalHeavy 6 Jan

in adapted rural communities, which used to be internal educational centers and then were adapted to housing, something crazy but it is like that.

Are you saying the reason people live there is because of the prior presence of internal educational centers?

Were these free colleges?

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @BTCLNAT OP 6 Jan

I'll tell you the short story. Students from Africa and Asia were concentrated here, supposedly to educate them, but in reality it was a very lucrative business for the government here. In addition, there were Cuban students living there in a supposed work-study program, but in reality they maintained the agriculture in exchange for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as if they were slaves. I experienced this when I was 12 years old. They gave me a machete that was my size to cut the grass and I carried 100-pound sacks of potatoes when I weighed only 60 to 80 pounds.

Over time, this system was dismantled and these buildings were abandoned. They began to be used to solve the housing problem and also to force the people who live there to work in agriculture for precarious wages.