What do you think of the bitcoin paradise in the south of the Pacific Ocean? I read them below.

Bitcoin paradise? Briton creates ‘crypto utopia’ in South Pacific

For the past 12 years Anthony Welch and his partner Theresa have been living a Robinson Crusoe life alone on a South Pacific island mostly untouched by humanity.

Welch, a retired British property investor, hopes the tranquility will soon be shattered by 21,000 cryptocurrency investors he is trying to convince to move to his island and form a regulation-free “crypto utopia”.

Under Welch’s plan, the 3 million sq metre (32 million sq ft) island, which is part of the Vanuatu archipelago between Australia and Fiji, would be transformed from 90% undisturbed rainforest into a “sustainable smart city”, filled with multistorey apartment blocks and offices for cryptocurrency investors from around the world.

Welch, who has renamed the island from its native name Lataro to Satoshi (in a nod to Satoshi Nakamoto the pseudonym of the person who invented bitcoin), has joined forces with cryptocurrency evangelists to create a “blockchain-based democracy” and “the crypto capital of the world”.

However, Welch will first have to unwind his previous marketing of the island as a “wildlife nature reserve” home to rare giant crabs.

In his previous attempt to sell the island for $12m (£9m), Lataro is described as an ecological paradise “covered in lush rainforests, together with a wonderful array of flora and fauna that’s been here for thousands of years undisturbed and will surely make anyone believe they have gone back in time”.

A video promoting the island for sale in 2017 boasts that the 4 miles of “pristine coral reef surrounding the island is a marine conservation area” that “teems with beautiful fish and coral life”. It says only a handful of people have ever dived at the reef and “most parts of it have never been explored”.

The Welches have previously petitioned the Vanuatu government to designate the island as a wildlife reserve to “prevent the extinction” of the rare coconut crab. “The ultimate goal is to re-establish the breed strongly on the island,” Theresa said.

A website describing the couple’s efforts to establish the wildlife reserve was deleted soon after the Guardian approached Welch for comment. He said the reserve was “voluntary” and one that he could “dismantle at any time” to allow for the building of the crypto city.

Aerial view of coastline at Port Vila, Vanuatu

EU could suspend Vanuatu visa-free travel over ‘golden passports’ scheme

Read more

“This was the last place with coconut crabs, they [the local population] had decimated them absolutely everywhere else on Espiritu Santo [Vanuatu’s largest island nearby],” Welch told the Guardian.

“We formed the reserve to try to stop them decimating them here to get the numbers back up … the government department for the environment have supported us creating a wildlife refuge here.”

The Satoshi island project is the latest in a series of schemes aimed at bringing cryptocurrency fanatics out from behind the blockchain in their bedrooms and into real-world community in small island states.

The president of Palau, another Pacific island nation about 3,000 miles to the northeast of Vanuatu, has launched plans to become “the world’s first government-backed national stablecoin” by the end of the year.

President Surangel Whipps Jr says the country has partnered with Ripple, a US cryptocurrency firm whose executives have been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission of stealing $1.3bn worth of the tokens, “to create a national digital currency, providing the citizens of Palau with greater financial access”.