Killed by the wool party

In May 2018, the founder of Cryptonomics Capital and Russian-American Nikolay Evdokimov announced that he would establish the world's first blockchain country - Decenturion.

According to his vision, this is a completely decentralized country with no government, no president, and absolute democracy. Citizens of this country use digital currency, and national governance will also be built on the blockchain.

At the same time, Nikolai has identified four small islands near Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, each of which is about 18,000 square meters, equivalent to two and a half football fields. He plans to buy these four islands and formally "found the country".

"The big countries around these four islands - Malaysia, Thailand, China - will probably be the first countries to recognize us," he said.

In July 2018, Decenturion held its first "National Congress" in Moscow and issued "passports" to 1,000 "nationals". “Every day, 10,000 people apply to join our country,” Decenturion said.

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Passport documents issued by Decenturion

Who are the people who apply to join Decenturion? According to official sources, 80% of "naturalization applications" come from China.

In fact, players in the Chinese currency circle are the main force behind Decenturion's "naturalization".

Why should they join?

The reason is ironic - to squeeze the wool.

In May 2018, Decenturion issued its own digital currency, DCNT, and launched an airdrop operation. Registering a Decenturion account will send 1 DCNT, and applying to become a citizen can get 100 DCNT.

The price of one DCNT has reached as high as $160. Players in the Chinese currency circle who are keen on plucking wool will naturally not let this good thing go.

In fact, the biggest publicity point of Decenturion is not the so-called democracy, decentralization and blockchain governance at all, but the simple and crude "money distribution".

According to Decenturion, becoming a citizen of the country not only does not need to pay taxes, but also "gets a salary". Salaries will be paid in the form of digital currency, and each person can receive a salary worth 25,000 U.S. dollars per year.

Where did the money come from? According to Decenturion, the state will invest in at least 300 blockchain start-up projects and distribute 50% of the project tokens to citizens in the form of wages.

In addition, those who join Decenturion in the future need to pay an immigration fee of US$1,000. It is also one of the sources of national income.

Paying money for "immigration" and receiving "national wages", Decenturion's scam color is getting stronger and stronger.

But there are still people who want to believe it. Some people say that Nicola, the founder of Decenturion, also runs an ICO investment platform ICOBox. The latter raised $650 million for dozens of ICO projects, and ICOBox’s own ICO also attracted $14.6 million.

Unexpectedly, it was the ICOBox platform that directly led to the demise of Decenturion.

In September 2019, the SEC accused ICOBox of engaging in illegal securities offerings.

In January 2020, the California court found that ICOBox was illegal and fined it $16 million. Nikola also had to pay a fine of $100,000.

After the judgment came out, Nicholas chose to run away and disappeared. The representative of ICOBox company has also left and has no one to replace it.

Decenturion has since died, its official website can no longer be opened, and its social media accounts have also been cancelled.

The price of the digital currency DCNT issued by it has dropped from a peak of 160 US dollars to 0.0002 US dollars, a drop of 99.999875%.

"The country died because of the Chinese Wool Party, and the head of state died because of the SEC." Some players ridiculed this short-lived "country".

"Blockchain Island" Bankruptcy

The story of Decenturion's "blockchain nation building" has come to a dramatic end. The "Blockchain Island" plan proposed by the European sovereign state Malta is also on the verge of bankruptcy.

Malta is an island country located in the center of the Mediterranean Sea. In 2016, Malta Prime Minister Muscat proposed to list blockchain technology as a national key development project. The outside world believes that Malta may become the blockchain center of the world.

However, a murder in 2017 planted the seeds of bankruptcy for Malta's "Blockchain Island" plan.

On October 16 of that year, the car of Maltese journalist Daphne Galicia exploded suddenly, and she herself was unfortunately killed. A police investigation found that a bomb had been planted under her car seat.

Malta's "Blockchain Island" plan is exactly what Galicia strongly opposes. She believes that this plan will turn Malta into a bitcoin money laundering center and become another breeding ground for corruption.

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investigative journalist galicia malta

After Galicia was killed, the police quickly arrested three killers, but they were only the executors of the assassination. For two full years, the man behind the assassination has been at large.

In the past two years, Malta has successively promoted a number of bills to formally incorporate the regulatory framework of blockchain technology into law. A large number of companies have also begun to move their headquarters to Malta to evade the legal supervision of other countries. Binance and OKEx, which are well known to players in the Chinese currency circle, are also among them.

Binance founder Zhao Changpeng once posted on Twitter, thanking Maltese Prime Minister Muscat for accepting Binance.

However, in November 2019, the murder of Galicia fermented again. Fenech, a wealthy Maltese businessman, has been arrested by the police.

Facing the police, Fenech denied all the allegations, but did not apply for bail. He even stepped out of the courtroom to smoke a cigarette in front of an angry public between trials. He confessed that Muscat was the mastermind behind the case.

Soon, a large number of Maltese government executives announced their resignation. On December 1, tens of thousands of people in Malta rallied and marched, calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Muscat.

On the same day, Muscat announced his resignation.

The Muscat government is the direct promoter of the "Blockchain Island" plan. The resignation of the Prime Minister has completely bankrupted the plan. Soon, Malta tightened the approval of licenses related to blockchain and digital currency.

In April 2020, the Malta Monetary Authority disclosed that 70% of blockchain start-ups that completed the first phase of the application process failed to obtain a Malta financial services license.

In 2019 alone, the Malta Monetary Authority received 340 applications. But so far, the Financial Services Bureau has not issued a digital currency license.

The data shows that 57 companies that applied for a Malta digital currency license gave up the application without even completing the process.

Binance, the most well-known company on the "Blockchain Island", was also revealed to have not obtained a license.

In January of this year, BugM, a supporter of Galicia and an anonymous blogger, posted on Twitter, questioning whether Binance had actual operations in Malta.

“Binance has two companies in Malta: Binance Europe Services Ltd and Binance Market Services Ltd. Neither company reported any revenue, no profits, and paid no taxes in 2018,” BugM said.

In February, the Malta Financial Authority issued a statement stating that Binance had not been licensed to operate a digital currency business in the country, nor had it been regulated by Malta.

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new plan

"In a small country like Malta, the government is greatly influenced by the individual will of those in power. Once the government changes, the original policy may be abolished." Lao Ma, the head of an exchange familiar with overseas markets, told a blockchain .

He said that many small countries still maintain the model of family politics, with a high concentration of power. Most of the so-called blockchain plans proposed by them have finally become the umbrella of some digital currency companies, and they are also involved in power-money transactions.

In this case, such policies can only attract some shell companies, but cannot attract real blockchain technology companies.

And those "countries" that intend to rely on blockchain technology to build a country are mostly stuck in the fantasy stage, where scams are rampant.

For example, in July 2018, a company called "Blue Frontiers" (Blue Frontiers) announced the launch of an ICO to raise assets for its "nation-building" plan.

The company plans to build a "floating city" in the South Pacific, which consists of several floating islands and can accommodate 300 residences, hotels, and office buildings. The project is planned to start construction in 2020 and complete in 2022.

At the same time, Blue Frontier also announced that it will build the world's first "decentralized government", use blockchain technology for social governance, and use the digital currency VAR raised by ICO as the national currency.

At that time, the project was favored and endorsed by PayPal founder Peter Theil. Its small-scale ICO program also raised $600,000.

However, 3 months later, the Blue Frontier team announced that it would postpone its ICO plan. "The long bear market and the catastrophic ICO trend have forced us to consider postponing this plan," Blue Frontier Medium's official account wrote.

They claim that the termination of the ICO does not mean the end of the blue frontier project, and the team has found a new sea area in French Polynesia. However, until today, Blue Frontier still has no new progress, and its official blog is no longer updated.

In 2015, Czech Witt Jedliczka found an unclaimed land of about 7 square kilometers between Serbia and Croatia, and declared an independent country here, named it "Land of Freedom" (Liberland) .

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Source of the location of the Land of Freedom: Official website

The Land of the Free claims that it does not collect taxes, has no army, and does not interfere in the territory of other countries. The national slogan is: "Live yourself and let others live." The Land of the Free does not have an official currency, but it also accepts bitcoins, including Bitcoin all currencies.

This small unacknowledged country claims to be experimenting with blockchain governance. In 2019, it announced that it would build an open-source, decentralized self-government and migrate administrative functions such as voting, government budgeting, passport issuance, and company registration to the EOS blockchain.

In March, the Land of the Free announced the appointment of a new "Finance Minister", Ali Kassab. The latter served as CEO of Smart SMB, a blockchain company in Dubai.

In addition, Land of Freedom has also been invited to attend various international blockchain summits many times to introduce its experience in "blockchain country governance".

Today, the "government" of the Land of the Free is based in Prague, Czech Republic, and its real "homeland" remains uninhabited. Compared with "building a country" in the political sense, Land of the Free is more like a performance art.

For the land of the free, the biggest contribution of the blockchain may not be "national governance", but fundraising.

The 2018 financial report released by Land of Freedom shows that Land of Freedom received donations of US$450,000 that year, 60% of which came from digital currencies such as Bitcoin, BCH, and BSV.

From 2014 to the present, new "countries" have continuously appeared in the chain circle.

According to preliminary statistics, there are at least 10 blockchain projects, with "Jianguo" and "Rejuvenation" as the core of their propaganda.

However, most of these "countries" have no territory and are not recognized by any country.