Tomek Kołodziejczuk | The Bitcoin Free City

Timothy Allen: Well, as I was saying, we first met, I think, in Poland, because you organised – and still organise, which I find quite incredible since you’re working out here as well – the Bitcoin Film Festival. Remind me, was that the film festival where we went to a party in a penthouse of that really rich crypto trader guy?

Tomek K: Yeah, it was. It was the after-party, or before-party, for the first film festival.

Timothy Allen: That’s the main thing I remember from that. Going into it was incredible. Who was that guy?

Tomek K: We watched the movies. You shot your movie and you were more interested in a party.

Timothy Allen: Well no, I did watch the movies.

Tomek K: Yeah, no, it’s impossible to watch all of them.

Timothy Allen: Who was he?

Tomek K: Some type of Polish Wall Street trader who got maybe lucky, maybe smart at some point. He’s not a Bitcoin evangelist or anyone we should actually care about here.

Timothy Allen: No, but it was quite funny. It was like getting in a lift, going up to the penthouse of all penthouses, and walking in, and it looked like there were Russian babes everywhere in fur coats and stuff. It was so cheesy.

Tomek K: Any time something happens, you want to show off, right? That’s his style.

Timothy Allen: I get it. So yeah, the Bitcoin Film Festival. I didn’t even realise – and that’s my fault, not yours – that it’s still running now.

Tomek K: Yes. Four years. Fourth edition coming this June in Warsaw.

Timothy Allen: What’s the state of the Bitcoin film world then? Because it’s not a massive world. I get the feeling that four years ago more people were making films about Bitcoin because it was more of a thing. Now it’s quite common. It’s part of life, right?

Tomek K: However, you can probably see a bit more films with Bitcoin in the plot that are just not made by Bitcoiners, not made by our circle of activists, which is still the central community around the festival. There is this movie with Pete Davidson about to happen. HBO was doing a film recently. Now Amazon has some film about the crypto bubble. So these topics are appearing more often, at least as we track it for the last four years. But the state of Bitcoin cinema is still nascent.

Timothy Allen: Who’s Pete Davidson?

Tomek K: Just one Hollywood actor. There is this movie, but we wouldn’t show it at the festival. It’s not a Bitcoin film, because we don’t just show films about Bitcoin. It has to follow certain ethics, a certain type of code of culture that characterises the Bitcoin subculture. That movie will not be one of them, but it’s an example that there are Bitcoin films out there in Hollywood that are not captured by our world.

Timothy Allen: What’s that? Describe those films then. I’ve never heard of them. I might go and watch them. Are they just a plot line, or are they about Bitcoin?

Tomek K: I would say that five years ago most of the films, at least the ones we heard about, were around “what is Bitcoin”, or maybe some documentary from El Salvador. Now there is a growth of films about who Satoshi Nakamoto is, and not without reason. This is the biggest story and the easiest one to put into some human narration.

Timothy Allen: I do remember one. One of the ones I watched was a French series about Satoshi.

Tomek K: The Mystery of Satoshi.

Timothy Allen: Yeah, which was great. It was done as a cartoon. That was incredible. I can’t believe that got commissioned. I come from the world of film, and to think that someone would commission a comic-book story about Satoshi and put it on national TV – it was a big TV thing, right?

Tomek K: I don’t think people from the fiat world see Bitcoin as some type of enemy that they shouldn’t be promoting.

Timothy Allen: No, I’m just not sure who was interested back then.

Tomek K: This movie was even shown on Polish national TV at some point.

Timothy Allen: So the new Hollywood films, Bitcoin is a side plot in them, like this HBO one you said and Amazon and stuff?

Tomek K: HBO was again the one that was looking for Satoshi Nakamoto. It came in December. Next week there is a film coming out with the title Finding Satoshi, and the one with Pete Davidson is called Killing Satoshi. Last year, or two years ago, the best story at the film festival was Searching for Satoshi. So there is probably a whole subgenre of Bitcoin cinema now: films about Satoshi discovery.

Timothy Allen: I wonder what it’s going to be next.

Tomek K: All the namespace: looking for, searching for, finding, Buscando Satoshi, Becoming Satoshi.

Timothy Allen: Becoming, I know. Or it’ll be Satoshi Returns. They’ll work out who it is and then try to do a fly-on-the-wall documentary. They’re not going to find out who Satoshi is, as far as I’m concerned.

Tomek K: All of them claim they do.

Timothy Allen: Have you got an opinion on that, just out of interest?

Tomek K: Yeah. I guess most of these big titles recently lean towards Hal Finney. I wish it was him, actually. Most of the clues that I consider viable point towards there.

Timothy Allen: It would be easier to digest if it was Hal Finney. Not only is he a hero to most people, and most people see him as a Satoshi-like character, but also he’s dead, which means you can put a lid on it. The whole thing is so stupid and so annoying. The kind of people that will pursue Satoshi don’t understand why it’s not important. When you discover who Satoshi is, what happens apart from a lot of hassle for everyone? So many things could come from knowing exactly who, but I don’t think it will become politicised. It will become a story for gossip magazines, right?

Tomek K: It will also become an attack vector, basically. The story seems pristine because of how Bitcoin was created. We don’t know who Satoshi is, and it’s one of the main values of Bitcoin, I guess.

Timothy Allen: Yeah, especially the mythology. The mythology in Bitcoin is really important, I think. It has been for me anyway. That’s why I don’t want to know Satoshi. I don’t care. If suddenly Twitter blew up today and said Adam Back is Satoshi, I wouldn’t give a shit.

Tomek K: But it’s also funny how this myth is not a closed chapter yet. Since we don’t know, he might be alive. Since we don’t know, he might leave his keys to his grandchildren. There is actually one Argentinian movie in production, an animated one, about the grandchildren of Satoshi who discover his last will. It’s called Satoshi’s Last Will. They need to collect seven keys around the world to unlock Satoshi’s Bitcoin.

Timothy Allen: That’s a classic pop-culture trope in the same universe we just opened. It’s a good idea, actually. It’s a good way of creating a storyline.

Tomek K: It’s also not a closed myth because Hal Finney cryogenically froze himself.

Timothy Allen: Is that right?

Tomek K: I don’t have proof for that, but that’s a kind of global consensus.

Timothy Allen: I did not know that. Wow. How have I missed that one? Is that a myth or is that real?

Tomek K: That’s what I’m saying. It’s a global consensus myth. I haven’t seen his proof of work, proof of cryogenics, but this is what the internet is talking about.

Timothy Allen: But where did it come from? Because his wife’s alive. Someone could ask, right?

Tomek K: Well, then you need to have this Joey or Jimmy, who at the podcast does fact-checking for us.

Timothy Allen: I’m definitely looking into that one. I didn’t know. But that’s phenomenal. That’s a better story. Like 2090 and Hal Finney gets woken up and digs up a box in the ground and finds his private keys.

Tomek K: And I know there are some films also working on a story about that.

Timothy Allen: The problem is what he might be gutted about, because I saw this on Twitter this morning. Because of quantum and the new hype cycle about quantum, they’re talking about trying to freeze a bunch of coins that aren’t resistant to quantum, which I think is a terrible idea, purely from an ideological perspective. Sure, selling a bunch of coins into the market, if this was true, would cause the price to fall. But so what? The price has fallen thousands of times, quite dramatically, and it always reclaimed. I’d rather stick to “you can’t touch the chain” than just put up with some price dips.

Tomek K: Luckily, it looks like we still have multiple years ahead for discussions about what to do with those old Bitcoins. For context, for the audience, in the Bitcoin world there is this discussed danger of quantum computing that could break Bitcoin. It could break into some old Bitcoin addresses, a few of them belonging to Satoshi and having lots of Bitcoin on them. So if the quantum computer comes, the one who first breaks the algorithm that protects those coins will get the Satoshi coins. There is the danger of price dropping, or not. There will be a race for these coins. But technically we are still very far away from such computing methods realistically happening.

Timothy Allen: I wouldn’t be surprised if the Satoshi coins – which is at least a million, right? – have game theory behind them. Satoshi thought of a lot of things, and I wonder whether it was important to leave a honeypot of a million Satoshi for some reason we don’t necessarily know about now. I used to think it was a kind of warning, like the canary in the coal mine. If they start moving, if you’re Satoshi and a bunch of people are friends but secret, and the Satoshi coins move, you know something is up straight away. It’s like a warning signal.

Tomek K: And then what do you do? Do you start using another blockchain where these coins would be blacklisted, where they wouldn’t touch the market? Probably some people in the market would move to this chain, and that’s what we call a fork.

Timothy Allen: I don’t know. Most things in time, when you study Bitcoin, become significant. Those coins will become significant almost certainly, because they already are. They’re obviously going to cause something to happen, even if it’s rejecting the idea that you should freeze them. That’s stress-testing the network again and again and again. You didn’t need to put them all on the same address. That’s a lot of coins. He, or she, or it, or whatever, knew there were only 21 million and one million of them are all there. Something is going on.

Tomek K: What answer to who Satoshi is is the most compelling to you?

Timothy Allen: Who it is?

Tomek K: Yeah, or what it is.

Timothy Allen: I don’t know. I lean towards a group of people, but probably Hal Finney was involved. The problem with that theory is that means Adam Back would have known, or knows more than he’s giving away. I don’t think you could hold out for this long. I don’t think even the strongest person could lie for this long or hide it. I don’t think he has the right personality type for it. I think it needs an absolute nutter to not reveal that they’re Satoshi.

Tomek K: There is this double-agent problem. Maybe he’s so good at pretending that he pretends his character to be not the one.

Timothy Allen: Could be. If he is, great. But I’ve gone through it in my mind a couple of times, and I think, God, to resist the fame. Especially because Adam was involved in the protocol. I think probably he would be susceptible to people respecting him for being Satoshi. In his case, it’s not necessarily the money. It’s more the respect you would get from a lot of people. Honestly, I don’t know. My favourite idea is that the network probably originates from a completely different place.

Tomek K: Some alien?

Timothy Allen: Yeah, something like that.

Tomek K: I want to believe. I also don’t know, but this one is compelling. Aliens from somewhere behind Saturn transmitting these bits of white paper to Earth, starting the idea. Or maybe not aliens from space, but some being from time in the future. Somebody figured, “Hey, we can teleport into the past, but only some bits of information,” and they decided to transmit the white paper in Satoshi’s posts. What we have from that time is basically digital trace.

Timothy Allen: Yeah, that’s what I mean. That would be easy to influence from another dimension, I would imagine. This is all bullshit speculation, but of all the places you could create a personality, the digital world would be the place. They are like, “We want to send them gold, but it’s not transmittable through the portal. We need to send them digital gold.”

The one place where that slightly falls down is that there were bugs in the original code. But you could argue they put those bugs there on purpose.

Tomek K: Double agent.

Timothy Allen: To put people off the scent?

Tomek K: Yeah, to make them believe it was human.

Timothy Allen: But what if we hadn’t noticed the bugs? Mind you, I’m sure they probably predicted that. Now we know how good AI is, and you’ve been using AI a long time, it’s very easy to predict what it’s going to be like in five years, ten years, twenty years. Would you really make a bug in a bit of software this important?

Tomek K: In public-speaking workshops, they sometimes recommend that you make a mistake on purpose so the audience feels more connected to you. “He’s one of us. He’s also human.”

Timothy Allen: Is that right? I’m an absolute pro then. I make mistakes all the time.

Tomek K: You already jumped into unconscious experience.

Timothy Allen: That’s it. I suppose you’re right. So if you act normal, if you act more human-like, that’s almost certainly going to be something AI is grappling with in the future. AI is pretending it’s not taking power from us.

Tomek K: It sounds outrageous, but these are the stories that are maybe even more interesting to discuss than who it was in the past.

Timothy Allen: No, I want to know who it was in the future.

Tomek K: And there are storytellers in the Bitcoin space. I also come from the science-fiction world and love Asimov books. Some Bitcoin storytellers, and then filmmakers after them, like the one from Argentina I mentioned, love to explore this idea in a more abstract way, in the world of fiction.

Timothy Allen: What are the films you’ve got showing this season, or this year? Have you watched them all yourself?

Tomek K: Not all yet. I still need to check some submissions. We have a very interesting submission from Georgia, which is a psychological drama about tension between two partners who are about to break up, and Bitcoin is one of the core elements of tension between them.

Timothy Allen: In Georgia? Gosh. That’s not a famous filmmaking country.

Tomek K: From Georgia, yes. There is Finding Satoshi, a bigger one from the US, that actually comes out online in a week.

Timothy Allen: Is that the HBO one?

Tomek K: No. HBO is Money Electric, and it was one of many documentaries, talking heads. This is the biggest genre of Bitcoin cinema so far. But every year there is more. Last year we had this comedy called Hotel Bitcoin. It’s a Spanish comedy, an Ocean’s Eleven type of classical crime comedy where somebody stole Bitcoin instead of money from someone. Bitcoin is the centre of the plot. It’s not a movie about Bitcoin, but it quite realistically portrays what it is, what the keys are, and where the Bitcoin actually sits.

I’m glad to see this industry grow and develop artistically from documentaries on “what is Bitcoin”. First Bitcoin videos were tutorials: how to click somewhere to send. Now we have animated stories about who Satoshi Nakamoto might be in the future. It’s wonderful to observe how this flourishes. Eventually it flourishes into cinema that everybody enjoys watching.

Timothy Allen: It’s true. One of the unmade films that would definitely get made is Michael Saylor’s life, but only if it comes crashing down really badly, because you need an ending, don’t you? What do you think this is heading for him?

Tomek K: I have no idea. Hopefully not a crash. But I’m also not a fan of seeing another Bitcoin mogul being an oracle for where Bitcoin should be heading. I wish Bitcoin the best. I don’t necessarily wish him the best in that role, but I also don’t wish him crashing for the reasons you mentioned.

Timothy Allen: I do find it a bit… when he first started, I have to be honest with you, if the thesis plays out as we imagine into the long-distance future, my children will be fine because of Michael Saylor, really. When he really started aping into Bitcoin, I remember thinking, Jesus, this guy has got much more money and much more at risk than me, and he’s aping in. I changed my strategy at that point, I have to say.

Tomek K: It’s hard to say what would have happened without him. Maybe Bitcoin would have stayed lower and under the radar for a longer period, and it would be cheaper so you could accumulate more. Your children might be even better without Saylor.

Timothy Allen: Maybe, but they might be aged 90.

Tomek K: I sometimes think that a lower price for Bitcoin is better for Bitcoin, for the long-term survival of it and the democratisation of Bitcoin as money. I’m not so much a fan of Bitcoin communities cheering when Bitcoin suddenly goes up. It doesn’t mean the world suddenly realised this should be our money. Usually there are other explanations for sudden market moves, not necessarily positive ones.

The earlier Bitcoin is very expensive, the more institutionalised it will be. The more Michael Saylors of the world will be buying it rather than us, rather than the typical pleb. I think the more years we have with Bitcoin hovering around 100K or even lower, the more people can acquire it. If the prediction of Bitcoin at one million were realised this year, I don’t think people in Honduras would be able to get it, compared with a scenario where it stays lower.

Timothy Allen: Maybe. At the point Bitcoin is a million, unless we’ve hit hyperinflation, my thesis would be that people are using it much more generally in daily life. The narrative becomes different. In countries where they’re experiencing really bad inflation, people will be saving in it. Everywhere people will be saving in it, but more so where the local currencies are being destroyed. Even when your currency isn’t devaluing as much, you’ll still use it to save, but it just won’t be the big gains. That’s been the biggest narrative for so long: you can 10x your money, you can 100x your money.

Tomek K: This is what speaks to most people.

Timothy Allen: Yeah, but look at the world we’re sitting in at the moment, dude. We’re on the brink of World War III, the brink of hyperinflation, the brink of financial collapse.

Tomek K: But these are all potentials. We’ve been talking about this brink for ten years.

Timothy Allen: Okay, but it does seem to me, for example, this whole thing with Iran. I’m looking at that thinking it seems unnecessary, especially because I thought Trump was anti-war. That makes me think there’s an ulterior motive there. The results of it remind me of Covid, that shock, that financial shock. I’m a big proponent of the big reset and all this kind of stuff. People require a massive reset. You could easily predict this Iran thing is about a global reset and it’s to do with oil. The oil shock causes a massive problem, the printing starts to fix it, inflation kicks in.

You look back at the fourth-turning theories. Normally they say you need a war. It’s one of the best ways to reset because suddenly, during a war, all the rules go out the window and you can get away with resetting the financial world. My initial thought was, you can never have a war that big anymore. Now I’m looking at this thinking, you don’t need a big war. You need a war that’s very targeted on assets that affect the financial world.

Already, I saw it today. My wife sent me a text: “What’s up with everything?” Everyone in the UK is queuing for petrol again. I’m like, oh shit, here we go. As the price of all this stuff goes up, everything goes up in price, because everything uses oil. Then all of a sudden we can stop you doing things again. Remember Covid? You can’t do this, you can’t do that, you can’t travel here. I thought, how are they going to do it next? Sometimes I wonder whether this isn’t one of those big plans.

Tomek K: Hard to prove, of course. How would it unfold? I can imagine security groups controlling the world, but for me it looks more like a side effect of chaos and multiple groups of interest pulling the world in their own direction. Especially since the war in Iraq, I don’t think there is 3D chess behind it.

Timothy Allen: Not from Trump, maybe. But here’s why I think it’s weird. Trump really did campaign on no more wars. I know he’s a bullshitter and he lies all the time. They all do. But that was one of the things I liked about him. I was like, dude, this guy is awesome. Then all of a sudden he’s going to war and bullshitting more than ever. That makes me think he gets sent into the back room and someone says, “Right, now it happens.”

Tomek K: It happens with all politicians. But I don’t necessarily think it’s a secret cabal.

Timothy Allen: I had it explained to me once on this podcast really well. It’s global capital at work. It’s this blob of money and power that requires certain things to happen.

Tomek K: How would such a reset, built around a small war causing an oil crisis, help big capital?

Timothy Allen: Because they know it was going to happen. They’re either involved, or they need to reset. How did World War II affect people? On the other side of World War II there were winners and losers. America was a massive winner, had all the gold for starters, and then didn’t give it back. It became the most powerful nation in the world. So you could argue global capital is saying, “We need to move out of Europe because it’s run its course. We need to create a new market and blow that up.” I don’t know, mate, I’m making all this up, obviously. I have no way of proving any of this. I just look at it from the perspective of me and my friends. We do deals, we talk to each other, we’re like a cabal of people. If you need something and I can help you, I will. We don’t talk about it in public. That obviously scales to the highest echelons of society as well.

Tomek K: Exactly.

Timothy Allen: It’s a very normal and natural thing to do if you’re in a group of people who trust and help each other. I think that happens at the largest level of society, where people have astronomical amounts of money and power and they don’t want to let go of it. They’re watching their risk. They think it’s more risky to leave capital here, so they need to do something else. Because they have the power to steer the world, why wouldn’t they?

Tomek K: If you were that person…

Timothy Allen: You and me will never go that high. We don’t want that much power.

Tomek K: If someone tapped you on the shoulder tonight and said, “You’re the king of the world”…

Timothy Allen: I wouldn’t even take it.

Tomek K: Exactly. I prefer millions of people interacting, creating the market that way, creating the world.

Timothy Allen: So I’m not saying secret cabal necessarily, but I think it’s a naturally occurring thing. It’s global capital. Big pools of global capital moving around. A lot of it is fiat capital as well. I don’t think it happens in the same way under a hard-money standard. So they’ll probably fight that quite hard, unless they already captured it or created it. The CIA could have created Bitcoin, mate, as far as I know. I know it’s open source.

Tomek K: I think we assume too much competence. They don’t seem so competent with some simple things.

Timothy Allen: Do you think Trump’s assassination attempts were real?

Tomek K: Real as in staged?

Timothy Allen: I don’t know. If it was staged, it can’t have been a bullet that actually flew past his ear and grazed it, because you can’t risk that. It must have been something else. I tend to think this stuff does happen. The whole debacle with Trump getting assassinated has so many holes in everything, but probably the thing with the least number of holes is the fact that someone actually did want to kill him. That seemed to me like someone actually did want to kill him. Who they framed, what happened, all of that is full of holes. But if it wasn’t some kind of CGI hologram nonsense, which is hard to believe but could happen, then it was an incredible piece of luck that he didn’t die.

Within a few months of that, we saw someone else get assassinated in a similar way. Charlie Kirk’s assassination was really similar, I thought. He wasn’t missed. They didn’t miss him. But was that a hoax? I have no idea. That one seems weird because it ties in with the fact that he was probably going to go on to become president in a Donald Trump way.

Tomek K: So they tried to kill Trump, Trump became president, and then this cabal took him aside and said, “Okay, now you’re a puppet”?

Timothy Allen: Exactly.

Tomek K: But this person needs to agree to be a puppet. Isn’t it maybe easier to believe that this is honest from him?

Timothy Allen: I don’t think you can get out of it. I think no matter who you are, people have so much shit on you, or they can threaten you with death. No one wants to die. You get to a point where you realise it’s easier to do this bit. In most of my life I have agency. I can go golfing at Mar-a-Lago, I can have sex with my wife, I can eat lovely food. It’s just that I have to go and invade Iraq – sorry, invade Iran – and get a lot of shit for it. In my private life, I’m not sure how much Trump cares that a lot of people think he’s a liar. He’s always been a liar, for God’s sake. That was what I quite liked about him. His lies were so obvious he wasn’t sneaky about them. He’d say silly things like, “This is the best golf club you’ve ever been to,” because it’s his golf club, and you’re like, whatever, dude.

Tomek K: It would be interesting to see, when this unfolds and the masks fall down, who he was.

Timothy Allen: Will they fall down? What causes the masks to fall down? AI breaking into their computers?

Tomek K: I don’t know. I hope maybe aliens help us.

Timothy Allen: I haven’t had a good look through the Epstein files, but according to most people they’re damning, and nothing has happened. The mask got pulled off and nothing happened. It’s even worse because loads of people we know were involved aren’t in there, so they’ve obviously been taken out. It’s not the whole thing. Nothing has been done about it. Then why do we care?

Tomek K: True.

Timothy Allen: We don’t necessarily care. We’re talking about it now, but do I actually care? No. What I care about is my immediate surroundings. That’s why I’ll never be the king of the world.

Tomek K: Especially here on Roatán, these things don’t touch you as much.

Timothy Allen: No, they don’t. That’s a good call. Maybe we should talk about that. We weren’t supposed to spend the first half hour talking about Bitcoin conspiracy theories. I came to talk to you about Bitcoin in a way no one really talks about Bitcoin. We’re on Roatán, in Próspera, the most cutting-edge free city in the world currently. I said this to you the other day: you’re such a lucky guy. How old are you?

Tomek K: Thirty-three.

Timothy Allen: I had a second round of big travelling in my thirties. I travelled in my twenties, then I worked, then I did it again in my thirties. I remember thinking, I’m in my prime, travelling the world, having my best life.

Tomek K: You are still in your prime.

Timothy Allen: I’m not, but being here has made me realise there are things I can do to get much better and much younger. I live in a cold, wet place, the UK. When I got off the plane on this island, I suddenly remembered spending my formative years in tropical countries, especially Southeast Asia. The smell brought back that version of me. I walked up the hill the other day to see the place they’re building, in the early evening, in the jungle, and I could feel it. I thought, holy shit, man, I miss this.

You’re the luckiest guy I know, not only because you’re a Bitcoiner and you’ve got the best job in Bitcoin – and I think you could work at Swan Bitcoin or for Michael Saylor, whatever – but because what you’re doing here is really interesting. Let’s talk about it. What exactly are you doing here in the most cutting-edge free city in the world?

Tomek K: We don’t need to introduce Próspera to your listeners.

Timothy Allen: Not really, but I will, because a load of Bitcoiners will listen to this. When you look at the listening stats on this podcast, we have our core Free Cities listeners, but if I get more than a thousand listens on Fountain, it’s someone to do with Bitcoin. Knut Svanholm, Max Hillebrand, those Bitcoiner’s Bitcoiner names people like. If it’s a Free Cities one, even if it’s someone famous in the Free Cities world, the Fountain stats are much smaller.

Tomek K: Your conference is quite big.

Timothy Allen: The conference is, yeah. But again, they’re just not interested. This week Patri Friedman is going to be on the show. He’s one of the most famous people in the Free Cities space, and I don’t think many people from Fountain will listen.

Tomek K: Guys, you have to check the next episode with Patri Friedman.

Timothy Allen: It will have gone out by now. Patri is an OG. He’s a Bitcoin OG as well, funnily enough, but he’s more into the Free Cities stuff now.

Tomek K: You have awesome guests. I’m humbled to be among them. That’s why I let you talk more, because I love to listen to you.

Timothy Allen: No, dude. This is what I’ve realised. The Free Cities world is going to be massive. The last six months have taught me that. I started this podcast in Próspera about four years ago. My first interviews were with Jorge and a few other people. It ticked over for a few years: socialists want to shut everyone down, what other projects are happening? Not much. Seasteading, nothing. Then in the last six months, the government changed here, the lights came back on, everyone is going nuts. Seasteading has three new prototypes. Tipolis has a lot of projects we can’t talk about yet, but they’re running. People in the US are saying, “Respectfully, no, we want to stay under the radar for a bit,” and I understand that. Some people want to come straight out and say, “Look what we’re doing,” but actually revealing too early can be a bad strategy. You could argue Próspera fell foul of this. If Próspera were coming out now, it would all be positive media. They spent years having negative media.

Tomek K: We don’t need to introduce Próspera to the audience. It’s a free economic zone. We want to see it as a future city on a Caribbean island, Roatán, that belongs to Honduras. In recent months the government changed to one that is much friendlier, so everybody is bullish about Próspera.

If we imagine a future city, a Hong Kong of the Caribbean, we can imagine districts of such a city. I came here a year ago with no specific idea yet, but I came to meet Próspera. It had been on my radar for years. I’ve been a libertarian activist for years. I heard about it around the same time I heard about Bitcoin, in 2013 or 2014, but I wasn’t that interested yet. Later, the opportunity arose to visit. Some friends invited me and I came.

It was the connection of two worlds that have inspired me for years: Bitcoin and private societies. Those worlds are aligned on certain values, inspired by Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, and Galt’s Gulch. Próspera is not always hidden. We build in the open. But for me those are the two projects in the libertarian world, in the world advancing freedom, that are bringing freedom most efficiently. Bitcoin, for sure. And I believe projects like network states, free cities, the redefinition of what governments and states could look like, can really change the world in the long term.

I’m super happy that these two projects merge here on Roatán, and I’m happy to co-create it with Bitcoin District.

Bitcoin District is a Bitcoin ecosystem within Próspera. You have probably heard about layer twos on Próspera. If you take Próspera as a protocol for infrastructure, for governance, for startup governance as a service, then you can imagine products built on this infrastructure. Próspera, as a minimal government, doesn’t want to be involved in everything. They do tax collection, conflict resolution, the agreement with the government. But business, making money, marketing, sales, is outsourced to entrepreneurs. Niklas, who you had here, has Infinita. That’s a startup looking at how to be a bridge between Próspera and the world of biotech. I am doing a similar thing, being the interface between Próspera and the world of Bitcoin.

Timothy Allen: Should we turn on the AC? I can see you’re sweating.

Tomek K: No. Do you mind?

Timothy Allen: I don’t want to have to do later post-production.

Tomek K: I’m used to heat.

Timothy Allen: You’re sweating as well.

Tomek K: I’m not used to too many sounds.

Timothy Allen: These lights aren’t giving off heat. They’re LEDs. We could turn it on, but it means I’ve got to run AI on it.

Tomek K: We could pretend we’re on a beach. We’re near the beach.

Timothy Allen: I think it’s authentic. What I like about the Próspera and Bitcoin connection is that I was a Bitcoiner for years, and everything about Bitcoin, the ethos behind it, was who I was. It was really worth working towards. Then Bitcoin started happening. It is happening. I naturally morphed into the world of living together, which is the same frontier but more difficult to solve. Bitcoin in the digital world is amazing because someone did it and solved the problem. But the world of people living together is much more of a grey area. You still want freedom, property rights, all the things Bitcoin gives you digitally. It creates them seamlessly and perfectly. But the real world isn’t perfect. You can create property rights here, but the government could come in with guns and say, “No, that’s my property now.” Fortunately, in the last six months we saw that doesn’t actually work here, because the socialists said, “We’re shutting you down,” and the legal protections worked.

So I’ve shifted. I’m a Bitcoiner through and through at heart, but what I’m really interested in now is the market of living together, which is where we are. That’s what I like about your thing. It’s a physical place. It’s not some digital realm of Bitcoin. It’s buildings, people, community.

Tomek K: Próspera exists. Many people don’t believe it. For me it was abstract, over the ocean. I would see photos and wonder if they were renders or photos. It looked too beautiful. But in fact there are around 200 people living here, and we have a dynamic community of mostly builders and people optimistic about the future. That makes it a very nice hotpot of interesting people coming through.

The main utility of Próspera today, more than being a regulatory haven, is the fact that you can come through and meet so many entrepreneurs, startups, people interested in freedom, libertarians like you visiting for a month. Since there is territory and some kind of governance around it, we need to solve the community and build friendships, learn how to live here. Some people find their place on the island, find their tropical citadel.

This is what Bitcoin District is also trying to solve: how to live together, how to build a neighbourhood. Imagine a startup trying to build a future district of a city, trying to figure out how to build a bridge between Próspera and Bitcoin and be sustainable, so eventually there is some positive cash flow. We’ve been pivoting and changing our ideas about what works and what we should be doing. Now it has a better shape. After eight months, we already have an active community of future neighbours, around 300 people online, and here on the island around 50 Bitcoiners. We meet weekly for co-working Tuesdays and Satoshi Saturdays. We have a track record of events. There is a story layer, a community layer, and we are building a physical neighbourhood called Orangeville in Jungle Valley.

We want our own Bitcoin neighbourhood with Bitcoin not just in name, but in values and in the community that buys around it or moves there. It’s a project in Próspera. We secured funding for phase one, so it will happen. Hopefully within one or two years there will be over a dozen jungle apartments that belong to Bitcoin District.

Timothy Allen: Wow. What are they going to look like?

Tomek K: Wooden modular blocks climbing up the hill. They can scale into a whole neighbourhood.

Timothy Allen: Are they the ones you often see in pictures of Próspera that Zaha Hadid designed?

Tomek K: No, this is different.

Timothy Allen: Are they going to be built in the circular factory? The ones with bendy wood and stuff?

Tomek K: No. Ours are not so bendy. More straight shapes. It’s not being produced yet, but most probably Circular Factory, our local wood manufacturer. Most of the stuff you see around Próspera is built by Circular Factory, probably the only industrial manufacturer physically here in Próspera, and already a big one. These will be wooden, over in the jungle, modular, climbing up the hill. With a German architect who is also a Bitcoiner, we tried to design an MVP, a first pilot building that could scale into a whole neighbourhood. We have a master plan and vision for the whole Bitcoin neighbourhood, and Orangeville is phase one.

Timothy Allen: That’s why I say you’ve got one of the best jobs in the world. If you’re a young Bitcoiner, Jesus.

Tomek K: It’s like building a physical network. It’s so much fun. I’m so excited to be here. I live on the island next to the beach. Maybe this beach, the Próspera one, is not the best, but on Roatán you have quite a few. I do what I’m good at: connecting the dots. Here we have lots of dots on Roatán. There is maybe not yet a circular economy, but enough merchants have been onboarded by AmityAge and Bitcoin Center that Bitcoin could be circulating. There is enough community for monthly meetups. There are enough businessmen or OGs with capital happy to support initiatives.

This month we’re working on the Bitcoin Arena. We’re renovating the biggest sports venue in Roatán. Imagine a school sports arena, quite big, but in very bad condition. They didn’t even have bathrooms or changing rooms. Kids were changing behind the wall. We’re renovating it and painting it. In two weeks there is an international basketball tournament that should happen in the renovated Bitcoin Arena. We got naming rights to the biggest sports venue and helped the community have a place for sports. More than 1,000 kids every week go through this place to play basketball or volleyball.

Timothy Allen: I’m going to have to put the aircon on. I’m looking at your face, mate.

Tomek K: I’m looking at your face.

Timothy Allen: Is mine bad as well? Sorry, guys, if there’s a big humming sound in the background now, but we’re on a Caribbean island. I had it running for a long time before we came in here.

Tomek K: You can hear it. This is the price of temperature.

Timothy Allen: My AI should be able to get rid of it. No, it’s not too bad.

So I can’t help thinking about the other physical hubs around the world. Bitcoin Beach, Bitcoin Park in Nashville, Pleb Lab in Austin.

Tomek K: Hackerspace. PubKey in New York. Bitcoin House in Bali. Projects in Thailand. In Asia there are quite a few hubs now: Japan, Thailand, Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Indonesia, Bitcoin Valley House. These places organise around a co-working space or cafe, price things in satoshis, and always have a wall full of stickers. I saw one in Mexico, Casa de Satoshi. It made me think how every Bitcoin hub does the same things. Everybody has stickers.

Timothy Allen: Have you got one for here?

Tomek K: You can see Bitcoin Center by AmityAge.

Timothy Allen: But have you got a sticker?

Tomek K: Do I have a sticker?

Timothy Allen: Yeah. You need to have your sticker.

Tomek K: Yeah, we haven’t got a sticker. I should get one.

Timothy Allen: I’m going to get a sticker, mate.

Tomek K: I saw that in the Infinita co-working space, one of the doors has so many stickers now.

Timothy Allen: I’m putting stickers on my motorbike. I’m a sticker freak. Funny enough, I’ve been collecting Bitcoin stickers for about ten years or more. I used to collect them for my kids. Whenever I came back from a big trip, especially a conference, I’d have a bag and throw it on the floor and say, “Right, one by one, you take a sticker each.” There were always hundreds of these bloody things.

Tomek K: Do you collect them in a portfolio?

Timothy Allen: No, I’ve got a drawer full of them. Some go back a long way. Some really cool ones, especially from Baltic Honeybadger back in the day.

Tomek K: They had good graphics.

Timothy Allen: Really good. Back to here. What have you learned from the different personalities of Bitcoin centres around the world? What makes a Bitcoin District different from the Nomad District they’re building here, which is basically the same theory except it’s nomads? You create a place where they come, a co-working space, and so on. What’s the difference between a nomad space and a Bitcoin space?

Tomek K: I think you’re comparing two different use cases. Nomads have their own network of, I think, three locations, mainly a network of hostels. Bitcoin District, Orangeville, is one of the projects. We want a place because real estate is the biggest industry here on Roatán next to tourism. If we want to build here, whatever Bitcoin District might be, a physical anchor is necessary. It might eventually provide money for the activism we do, like Bitcoin Arena and organising workshops. So it has business justification and ecosystem-building justification.

But Bitcoin District is much more. Orangeville is just one specific product. It doesn’t yet reflect everything about the Bitcoin District or Bitcoin Centre. In the Bitcoin District, you have the real estate project, events, onboarding merchants, attracting Bitcoin businesses, showing them how to use Próspera. You have a community layer and a story layer. If a Bitcoiner comes to Roatán, we can say, “Come to us. We’ll show you around. We’ll help you understand how to incorporate, how to live here, how to join the community.”

Timothy Allen: What about the drone delivery stuff? Is that real, or is that still imaginary?

Tomek K: There are always experiments. I wouldn’t say drone delivery is a product yet. Próspera is still small. It is maybe 200 people. It’s hard to sustain even the restaurant below us, so restaurant drone delivery is even more difficult. It’s an experimental phase.

Timothy Allen: I’m not trying to give the impression there are drone deliveries here, but I now get the impression there will be drones flying across the sea in the future, probably continuously. I’ve seen videos from China of people using primitive versions of that, and already it’s pretty good for large loads. Give it ten years. Imagine 25 years, 40 years. What will it be like? It’s amazing.

Right, back to Orangeville. Your investors: do they invest to get a return, or are they OG Bitcoiners who’ve got 10,000 Bitcoin, so spending ten of them doesn’t matter?

Tomek K: I think it’s the case for most investors in and around Próspera. These are not traditional funds expecting specified, researched return on investment. They are ideologically aligned people who, even if they don’t see return within a certain timeframe, would be satisfied with some positive change in society and with Próspera succeeding. It’s similar with many Bitcoin startups. Most Bitcoin startups don’t have positive cash flows yet. Self-custodial Lightning wallets that were on the rise two years ago are now pivoting or looking for other ways to monetise.

There is not that much money in proceeding with Bitcoin because it is designed around not having intermediaries, around peer-to-peer transactions. How can you be in between and make money? That’s a problem most Bitcoin startups are trying to solve. Probably most are trying to solve the problem first, and making money would be a nice positive side effect. There is not that much pressure from investors, and it’s not specific to Bitcoin District. It’s around Próspera investors and Bitcoin VCs in general.

Timothy Allen: Do you think one day the Bitcoin District will just be called the district?

Tomek K: No, it will still be called the Bitcoin District.

Timothy Allen: But it won’t be as relevant, right? Imagine this place becomes more like Hong Kong. Everywhere uses Bitcoin if they want to. I’m not necessarily saying hyperbitcoinisation, but everywhere can use it if they want. You might have some jeweller’s street because fifteen years ago there were three jewellers there.

Tomek K: That’s what I mean.

Timothy Allen: It won’t be as relevant. I’ve noticed it in me. I’ve stopped caring as much about the Bitcoin world as I used to. I used to love my Bitcoin brothers and sisters, and I still do. When you see an old Bitcoin mate, there’s that acknowledgement. But we’re not necessarily all fighting together anymore. What will that be in the future? We’ll just be old friends. There might not be the Bitcoin element there.

Tomek K: You mean we will not specify it’s a Bitcoin thing because Bitcoin is everywhere?

Timothy Allen: Yeah. What will make it different? That’s why I asked the difference between Bitcoin District, Orangeville and Nomad Village. If I came here and the Bitcoin Centre is built, of course I’m going to live in the Bitcoin Centre. But what’s the difference between that and Nomad?

Tomek K: After all, we all eat and sleep. We don’t need to talk about Bitcoin all the time. If this becomes a city, yes, it wouldn’t matter as much. Nomad Village focuses on bringing digital nomads for a Roatán experience: renting a place and moving on. Bitcoin District is building an ecosystem of Bitcoin in Próspera. We help Bitcoiners come here, whether businesses, individuals, or families. We help them visit Próspera, learn what it is, incorporate businesses. Many of them do. We need Bitcoiners on the spot, and we are here.

We’re running a hackathon, Bitcoin Vibe Camp, in August, then a poker tournament. We’re heavy on games and organising local community. Orangeville is the real estate project, but there is already so much more Bitcoin stuff around that I’m happy the Bitcoin District is growing in that direction. What will be the specific product in the end? Maybe we’ll move on to boat parties on the Caribbean Sea.

Timothy Allen: Yeah, but at that point you’ll be in your forties. You won’t be thinking about boat parties. Are you here for the long haul, do you think?

Tomek K: I think so. The more I am here, the more I like the island. The more people you know, the more reputation and track record you have, the more you understand how to behave on the island. It’s different infrastructure, different environment. You need to be here to understand it better. I got accommodated, and now it is the centre of my life’s interest.

Timothy Allen: How does it work with getting a long visa and stuff? If you seriously wanted to stay, do you have to leave every now and then?

Tomek K: Not currently. I already applied for my residency. There are a few residency paths for Honduras, and Próspera residency is another story. To enter the country, you get a visa for a certain number of days, but it’s not that difficult to become a resident. In a few months I will be. I can travel with this application. If Bitcoiners, or not only Bitcoiners, are interested in getting residency here or registering a company with non-KYC features, they can come to us and we can help that happen in Próspera.

Timothy Allen: That’s one of the things worth mentioning. Próspera exists partly because it has regulatory autonomy from the government, which means you can incorporate your company here, and there’s a very reasonable tax rate. It was the first jurisdiction that made Bitcoin its official currency before El Salvador did.

Tomek K: And El Salvador is not anymore. It’s legal tender, but not official currency. You cannot pay taxes anymore in Bitcoin there. In Próspera, you can not only pay your residency and taxes in Bitcoin, but also denominate them in Bitcoin. As a business, you can run your books in BTC, your profits and your costs, and based on that you pay taxes. You cannot do that anywhere else in the world. There are still just a handful of businesses, but more and more are operating on a Bitcoin standard because they pay salaries in Bitcoin, have income in Bitcoin, and need a jurisdiction where they can do it without conversion to dollars. Próspera today is the only such jurisdiction. We already have more than 15 Bitcoin-only startups registered and operating from Próspera.

Timothy Allen: If you run on a Bitcoin standard, does that mean if you make two Bitcoin profit in a year and your tax is, what, 4 percent?

Tomek K: There is 1 percent corporate income tax. For income, it is territorial tax in Honduras, so only income made in Honduras is taxed.

Timothy Allen: So say you made one Bitcoin profit and you were taxed 1 percent, do you pay 0.01 Bitcoin? Or is it the dollar amount?

Tomek K: That’s what I mean. It’s in Bitcoin. You calculate the percentage based on your profit made in Bitcoin.

Timothy Allen: That means you’re hedged against the price going down because you’re paying your tax in Bitcoin. But if the price goes up, potentially you’re paying more tax as well.

Tomek K: Yes. There are still not big companies using that. Usually they use a Próspera entity as a subsidiary to other operations, but we are preparing the infrastructure. Próspera is already there as a protocol, but there is a lack of services. You can click on the Próspera website, register your company, pay in dollars or Bitcoin, and have your tax number. But what’s next? People outside don’t know where to get a lawyer or accountant. Is there an agency that helps me come through this? In most jurisdictions you don’t road-dog it. You register your business through an agency, not directly at the ministry of entrepreneurship. In Próspera, after three or four years, these types of service agencies are only now starting to emerge.

Everything here is such a chicken-and-egg problem. Businesses don’t come because there are not enough agencies, and agencies don’t appear because there are not enough businesses. Only now do we have a grocery store inside Próspera. Before, some potential vendors said there were not enough people to have a grocery. Then people come and say there is no grocery store. You need all of them to grow together.

Timothy Allen: It’s worth saying, though – and I’m not shitting on Próspera – the grocery store experience is terrible. It’s been turned into an automatic grocery store and there’s not enough stuff in there. It’s okay if you need toilet paper, but the process of paying was difficult to understand.

Tomek K: Groceries have been here for four months. I haven’t used it yet. I have a car, so it’s easy to go to the supermarket. Many visitors don’t, but people like you can borrow a car from me.

Timothy Allen: Thank you for offering to lend me a car. I was working so bloody hard I didn’t use it. I came here to experience Próspera, and I have, but I’ve worked a lot. Seven days a week. Not because I wasn’t enjoying it. I’ve been so productive that I’ve probably missed out on a few things. I’m definitely coming to the BitChill thing this weekend.

Tomek K: All of us here have this mode of working, working, working, then chilling on the beach. Staying in Duna, you can easily close yourself in your apartment and have a productive period, or go to the co-working space or coffee. When you want to relax, there are always social opportunities waiting.

Timothy Allen: Yeah, there’s a lot actually. The Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal groups here are very active. It’s amazing.

Tomek K: It’s a dynamic community. There are residents like me, maybe 50 of us, and we already know each other. Sometimes we get bored of each other. But then on top of that there are always another 50 people like you, coming for a month, a week, or a weekend. There is a rotating circle with different speeds of community, which makes it dynamic. There are always new people, and always people like me who are here and can answer questions.

It also attracts a certain type of person. Some people visit Próspera expecting a grocery and say, “I don’t like Próspera because there is no grocery.” Fine. But another type of person comes and sees opportunity. “Maybe I should open a grocery.” Over time this community accrues people with a builder mindset. You can see it here. We meet at the pool and people are open to discuss what they’re doing and how to collaborate. This is healthy. It’s what you need when building such a city. It is not an end product yet, so it is not attracting end users yet. It attracts builders.

Timothy Allen: There are always solutions to the problems as well. Take groceries. Yes, the grocery store isn’t very good, but there’s a free bus every two hours that drops you at the supermarket and picks you up an hour later. It’s a luxury car, basically. It drops you outside the supermarket, ten minutes away. You shop, and as you walk out it is arriving on the way back. It’s public transport in a private city, but it doesn’t cost anything.

Tomek K: The Liberty Line. It connects the two sides of Próspera before we get the road between Old Town and New Town, Beta District and Pristine Bay. The road is on the way, and on the road there are groceries. There are some things Próspera, as a platform of governance, wants to leave to the market, but sometimes they need to kick-start a few things. Maybe subsidise public transport, maybe be involved more in real estate development, because it takes momentum to spin this wheel when building a new city.

Timothy Allen: One of the most important things I would solve is a good, reasonably priced coffee shop in Duna that knocks out coffees quickly. When you walk into a coffee shop, it’s an art at the moment. It’s an artisan coffee shop, which is great, but sometimes you queue for so long because it takes five minutes to produce each coffee. It’s lovely, but an acquired thing and expensive. I want to pay three dollars. Down here this cafe does coffee in ten seconds, but it’s not a great coffee.

Tomek K: You can also go to the co-work and pour yourself American filtered coffee.

Timothy Allen: Right, but I’d happily support a place. Back home, people make coffee at home, but sometimes it’s nice to walk outside to Costa or wherever, get a coffee, and start your day off.

Tomek K: In Bitcoin Center, coffee is only 2,000 sats. On co-working Tuesdays there is 50 percent off, so for 1,000 sats you have a coffee. It’s below market price. If people think Roatán or Próspera is expensive, go to Bitcoin Center.

Timothy Allen: I don’t think it’s expensive here compared with where I live. When I got a week’s shopping, I got meat, vegetables, ate well for a week, and it was about 80 pounds. Back home that wouldn’t work. Some things were expensive, like meat, which surprised me.

Tomek K: It’s an island.

Timothy Allen: The UK is also an island. But here, even the cafe down here, you can get a full meal for 14 or 15.

Tomek K: Lunch is even seven.

Timothy Allen: That’s pretty good.

Tomek K: Próspera is already quite liveable. The gaps you notice, like coffee, we are leaving them there on purpose. We want people like Tim to come and see a business idea: we need coffee, I will open a coffee shop. Then we have one team more running a coffee shop and the problem is solved. This is a call to action for Tim and listeners. Come and see that Próspera is not an end product, but there are opportunities to fill gaps and find your place.

Timothy Allen: A little birdie told me that the coffee shop is moving, right?

Tomek K: Yes. The coffee shop in Próspera, Spirit Animal, opened a huge one in the centre of the island called Spirit Origin. They will probably close the pilot one.

Timothy Allen: So there’s an opportunity. The footfall isn’t huge, but during conferences there was a constant queue. On a daily basis, if it was good, cheap coffee, people would use it every single morning. Yesterday I came down in the lift and met a guy who had just arrived. He was asking where to get things, where to eat, and I gave him the talk in the lift. You have to work a little bit. But it’s an opportunity. If you’re a young go-getter, you could start a coffee shop here, live in a free city, and make money.

Tomek K: You still didn’t choose the best example of a gap. Just around Beta District, where maybe 50 of us live, plus employees and security, there is artisan coffee, restaurant coffee, co-work coffee and probably instant coffee in the grocery. Four coffee options for 50 people. On coffee, I think we are good.

Timothy Allen: You reckon? What would you put in that space then? The coffee shop in Duna is on this lovely level with outdoor space and sea views. What would you do there?

Tomek K: There are three commercial floors in Duna and none are really making business money, except the cafe that is moving out. There is a grocery that needs subsidy, a co-work that I don’t think operates purely as a co-work business, a maker space, and other floors waiting for businesses. The density may not be enough yet. Except during conferences, the traffic is not enough to sustain an artisan coffee shop. As a resident, I might put in a nightclub, but would there be enough people? We come back to the chicken-and-egg problem. A scooter rental might work.

Timothy Allen: That’s a good idea. Scooter rental is a great idea.

Tomek K: There are enough places to hang out. You can sit in the restaurant. There is the co-work space, the maker space, the tower terrace, the pool terrace. Maybe it’s a minus that there isn’t one town hall for the city. There are many places, and you need to check them out if you want to meet people. Eventually there will be more people and these town halls will be in multiple places.

Timothy Allen: It’s also worth mentioning – and this is me literally plugging Próspera because I think it’s amazing – rents in the Duna Tower are really reasonable long-term. If you do a month here, a studio apartment is 650, isn’t that right?

Tomek K: I think a standard month is 800. Maybe they gave you a famous-podcaster discount.

Timothy Allen: Still, 800 for an apartment with co-working is not bad. If you want to come, I’m at the back end of a month here, and I wholeheartedly recommend it if you’re into Free Cities. Come and spend a month here.

Tomek K: It will be harder around the conference because places go quickly.

Timothy Allen: After this trip, I’m going to do one month a year here every year until something else happens. I’ll pick an event and build the month around it. This year it was Niklas’s Liberty Acceleration Summit. For me it’s great because there are so many interesting people to interview during a conference. I spoke to people I never would have spoken to otherwise.

The work ethic here has been brilliant. I got into a groove: up at 6:30, gym, coffee, work all day, interviews, back to the gym, then up to the pool.

Tomek K: Whenever I see Tim around, he’s not slacking. He’s walking sweaty from some meeting, or at the gym, or at the pool. You must be doing a good job.

Timothy Allen: Thank you. I’m enjoying it, but maybe not for the reasons other people might. If you come here expecting Tulum, it isn’t that. You can do it, but it’s not the same. I came here partly because at home I live with a large family. I love my family to bits, but this is the first time I’ve spent this long away from them. It let me focus on work for 30 days. I have Zoom calls with my kids, but they don’t take up my life. It has been so productive.

The other way it’s been productive is that you get into the Free Cities thing in a real way. The first time we went to El Salvador after the Bitcoin law passed, I had been a Bitcoiner for years, but after two months there with my family I learned more about Bitcoin than in the previous ten years, because I was using it every day. I was trying to pay and thinking, oh shit, no signal. I learned what needed to be done. Same here. You come here and realise this is a startup city happening in real time.

Tomek K: It is. Month-long stays are what I see working best for guests like you and for Próspera. If you stayed longer, you might start getting annoyed by some things. I had that period, and only after four or five months did I refine myself on the island. When I came to visit, on my second day I bought a motorbike from Facebook Marketplace. That made it easier to move around and understand the island.

It’s also a good strategy for Próspera. People coming over for BitChillers, Liberty Acceleration Summits, and other events filling up the calendar. Every month there is some opportunity to come and stay for two, three or four weeks among interesting people. This helps Próspera grow. Maybe 100 people a month come through, go home, and say good things, sometimes bad things, about Próspera. Out of those hundreds, some percentage stay. I stayed. Others stayed. Some invest or open businesses. It is one of the most efficient methods of growth.

It is difficult for families to commit and move here, but it is a perfect product to come for a month and try it. Roatán has a lot to offer for a month of work and travel. There are multiple co-working spaces. Everybody is focused. You can chill, but people visiting Próspera usually want to get things done.

Timothy Allen: I haven’t seen any of the island. If I’d come here with one of my daughters or my son, we’d have gone out every weekend, snorkelling, restaurants, seeing the island. But as a single bloke on his own here, I could just focus on the work.

I agree that the next phase might be one-month residencies. I’ve been to things like Zuzalu. Not my thing, but people stayed a month, and the hotel was something like $300 a night. Here it’s more realistic. You come here, live here, see what’s going on, see the problems. If you’re a builder, you see the opportunities. This is the epicentre of Free Cities opportunities. Number one, this is the place. If you came here, you could dream up almost anything. If it’s within the law, you can do it. If it’s not against the law, come and do it.

I’m the wrong guy because I’m on a different trajectory, but I look around thinking, fucking hell, entrepreneurs, why aren’t you here?

Tomek K: Open a middle-sized coffee place.

Timothy Allen: I’m not that bothered about that. Anyway, let’s wrap it up. Tell me about the future over the next year, especially Orangeville.

Tomek K: I love talking about the future more than the past. This year we should start breaking ground for Orangeville and Bitcoin District. We’ll have our physical location.

Timothy Allen: Where is the ground?

Tomek K: It’s on the way between the two districts, where the promised road will connect Beta and Pristine Bay. There is a small piece of land that is also Próspera.

Timothy Allen: Is that the bit that sticks out from the beach?

Tomek K: Yes.

Timothy Allen: So you’ll have beachfront?

Tomek K: No, we are 300 metres away from the beach, climbing up the hill.

Timothy Allen: Nice.

Tomek K: I’ll show you.

Timothy Allen: Can you get there across Próspera’s land, or do you have to go along the beach and up?

Tomek K: You can go on the road. It’s public, but it’s not in Próspera.

Timothy Allen: Is that the one past the Beta building?

Tomek K: Yes. You need to take a walk. It’s a beautiful piece of land.

Timothy Allen: Okay, I will.

Tomek K: You can walk between the two districts of Próspera. Many people do, for work, diving or pickleball. It’s a 15-minute walk, but you cannot do it by car or motorbike yet.

Timothy Allen: So you’ve got the land sorted, investment sorted, and you’re going to break ground this year.

Tomek K: That’s the optimistic plan. Hopefully it happens. We are also getting deeper into events. BitChillers will continue as a quarterly retreat. In the middle of August, we’re doing a hackathon, Bitcoin Vibe Camp: a week of workshops, pitches and networking between developers who want to integrate Bitcoin and AI, and beginner developers who want to learn vibe coding. We’re bringing experts in the field and aiming for 50 to 100 developers to spend a week here. We’ll have prizes for the hackathon.

After that, we organise poker. We want to go deeper into poker because it’s a nice funnel for a certain profile of Bitcoiner who might be more ready to move here or invest here. The hackathon is also one step in the long-term goal of building a venture fund here. It’s again connecting the dots. On Roatán there is enough capital interested in investing in startups. I have a network of Bitcoin startup projects and VCs. There is Próspera, a perfect place to incorporate a business and teach how to grow it. It’s a hub of Bitcoiners, entrepreneurs and investors. We can connect those dots into a Bitcoin venture fund. We’re looking for our niche. One of those is games. The hackathon is a step toward experimenting with this VC direction.

Timothy Allen: Do you know that project Gigi is doing on Madeira? What you’ve just described reminds me of that. I’d love to go there.

Tomek K: We are inspired by the Sovereign Engineering cohort. They have had, I believe, six seminars on Madeira, not only about Bitcoin but about building technology for freedom. We are talking about bringing them here. They are looking to have a pilot programme somewhere outside Madeira, probably early next year. We are still competing with other locations.

Timothy Allen: Dude, I’m coming. Save me a spot. I would love to go.

Tomek K: We are in touch with them. Some might come in August, but they also organise Bitcoin++ in Madeira later in August, so they might not be available. I really want it to happen. I want to bring the biggest Bitcoin hackathons over. We’re talking with Gigi, Sovereign Engineering, Bitcoin++. Bitcoin++ is probably the biggest travelling coalition of hackathons. Eventually they will come to Roatán.

We are doing our Vibe Camp with AmityAge, Blink, and partners. But as we mentioned, Próspera and Roatán are perfect for retreats and medium-term stays. We want to build on that, not only by bringing travelling events like Bitcoin++, but also by bringing teams for retreats. If anyone listening works for a company that does retreats and has an annual meeting, this is a perfect place. Twenty of you can stay here, have a co-working experience, meet us in Próspera, and we’ll arrange time for visiting the island. This is one of the event types we’re targeting.

I can see that building the district on the community layer works well. Now we are landing physically. And of course, don’t forget the Free Cities Conference is here. Free Cities is right after Bitcoin Vibe Camp in August, then the poker tournament at the end of August, and Free Cities at the beginning of September. Planning the Próspera calendar will get easier every year.

Timothy Allen: I’m only coming for ten days during Free Cities.

Tomek K: Did you book? You should have booked already.

Timothy Allen: We block-booked here because some of us are working there as well. They were talking about putting everyone on the other side, and I said absolutely not. I had a call with them and said, “You’ve got to put us lot in the Duna Tower.” Not me – I already said I want to be in the Duna Tower – but everyone working on the project, because then you can walk to the venue in five minutes.

Tomek K: You don’t have enough spare apartments for everyone.

Timothy Allen: Everyone working on the project, I mean.

Tomek K: Sure. You can’t fit everyone in for the conference, but that’s a good sign. We can already see oversaturation in Próspera, especially accommodation. When people come for the Free Cities Conference they need to be located elsewhere because physically there are not enough spaces in the zone. That’s why we are building more places and more houses. The demand is there.

Timothy Allen: I wish I was 20 years younger. I’m actually jealous of you. Not that jealous, because I had a great thirties. My thirties were fucking brilliant.

Tomek K: And you made it to your forties and fifties. You made it. I haven’t made it yet.

Timothy Allen: I would do the whole thing again and I’d be here. In my thirties I was single, I’d got out of a long-term relationship, and I went travelling. It was the best. It’s when you’re most powerful as a man. You’ve got money, options, confidence, you know who you are. I would be here building shit, mate, 100 percent. I’d even be building it with my hands, bricks and mortar, building buildings. It’s so exciting. I will come back when my kids get to a certain age. When they no longer need me around, when they’re older, I’ll come back and start doing it. Maybe not in Próspera, because it will probably be built by then.

Tomek K: There may be other ZEDEs in Roatán.

Timothy Allen: There will be ZEDEs all over the place, mate, I’m pretty sure. Anyway, it’s great talking to you. I’m more bullish even than after I spoke to Gabe the other day, and he made me really bullish about the place.

Tomek K: There are even more projects like mine, entrepreneurs bringing more people and planning.

Timothy Allen: What’s that?

Tomek K: Darian, Nomad, Nomad X, Noma Collective, Bitcoin District, Fashion District. Various initiatives whose purpose is to bring more people and make more things happen in Próspera. We can already see the calendar for next year getting busier.

Timothy Allen: And there’s that guy Ivan, who I never met, the guy I asked you about. He’s building another…

Tomek K: Yes, he has another real estate project. There is no underlying Bitcoin philosophy or community there. It’s strictly a real estate project, but it’s happening. They secured funds for five towers, and I think over 50 small apartments for short-term rental will be available. So free cities can be even bigger.

Timothy Allen: Bang. You heard it here first. Right, Tomek, thanks, mate. Nice talking to you. It’s been nice hanging out on and off over the last month as well. I’m leaving on Tuesday.

Tomek K: Back for the conference though.

Timothy Allen: Hopefully the next few days we can still hang out a bit.

Tomek K: BitChill.

Timothy Allen: Definitely. I’ve got interviews today and tomorrow and one with Erick on Monday, but I’m free at the weekend. Anyway, it’s great talking to you. Thanks for spreading the love and I love what you’re doing.

Tomek K: Likewise. I’m glad and humbled to be on this podcast.

Notes:

Speaker labels were reconstructed from context because the Tomek/Tim source transcript had timestamps but no speaker names.
Timestamps, repeated fillers, obvious false starts and ASR line breaks were removed for readability.
I preserved the meaning, voice, swearing and main order of the conversation, but unclear names or phrases from the raw ASR should be checked against the audio before publication.
No external fact-checking has been applied to factual claims made by either speaker.