Featured Image Credit: Alamy/Satoshi Island
Topics: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Technology
Tom Fenton
An island in the South Pacific Ocean is being touted as a new 'crypto paradise', where citizenship costs a staggering £99,000 and comes in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT).
Set to be situated on Satoshi Island, which is under the jurisdiction of Vanuatu, all payments made on the island will be made with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
More than 50,000 people have already applied to live in the tropical haven, with future inhabitants set to live in extravagant modular homes.
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According to The Sun, developers have set the ambitious goal of completing construction on many of the homes by 2023, with the intention of housing a 'permanent population' in the long-term.
Named after Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Island is 32-million square foot and the project's website describes it as being intended to 'become home for crypto professionals and enthusiasts, with a goal to be considered the crypto capital of the world'.
"After years of preparation, a green light from the Vanuatu Ministry Of Finance and all approvals in place, Satoshi Island is now ready to be developed into a real-world crypto economy and blockchain based democracy," it adds.
The island will be able to house up to 21,000 residents when completed, and citizenship will be granted via NFTs.
Simply put, NFTs are digitised versions of a piece of work (such as a piece of art or music) that is then stored on the blockchain as a one-of-one commodity that cannot be replicated.
Residency is therefore secured via a minted NFT that will automatically appear in a resident's crypto-wallet.
NFTs have been subject to an increased level of scrutiny in recent months, with an array of high-profile celebrities now launching their own collections.
The likes of Reece Witherspoon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Steph Curry have all heavily marketed their own NFTs of late, which journalist Max Read described as a 'profoundly unsettling' trend.
The ease at which NFT hype can be generated, leading to wildly inflated prices for some art pieces, has led to many critics questioning the motives of stars who bring out their own NFTs.
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