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 3,000m sq metre (32,000m 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. » | Rupert Neate, Wealth correspondent | Saturday, February 12, 2022
