On the second day of “Citadel Scouts Argentina”, hours before the attendees arrived, Paul, Jon, and Micael jumped into the pool from the second floor’s window. The cameraman filmed the stunt. A producer of the upcoming Citadel Theory documentary asked, “What’s the number for 911 in Buenos Aires?” There was no need, the three amigos accomplished their goal… and then jumped a second time from the house’s roof.
The facade was nondescript, but the Palermo house was straight out of a magazine. It was spacious, with luxurious furniture and a garden around the pool. A crew of professionals tended a seemingly unlimited asado argentino and constantly brought dishes to the main room. In this temporary citadel, people came and went throughout the day and everybody was talking about Bitcoin. Lectures were scheduled, but no one seemed too bothered with precise timing.
The “Citadel Scouts Argentina” adventure was just beginning. In a few days, they would all travel to a ranch in Córdoba for a week and then to a lake in Bariloche for another week.
Citadel Theory And The Magic Of Side Events
Paul Keating is a surfer who lives half the year in Bitcoin Jungle, Costa Rica. He produces videos and promotes Primal, one of the leading Nostr clients. “Side events are where all the magic happens,” he said. “It’s where you can actually go deep. The conferences are usually just shallow interactions, just “hi,” “bye,” “what’s up?” “good to see you,” hug, “adios.” In a “small event” you can “learn about new projects and have fun.”
Everybody at “Citadel Scouts Argentina” seemed to resonate with that sentiment.
Tatiana Moroz is a singer-songwriter. She got into Bitcoin in 2012, while performing for the Ron Paul campaign. She feels big conferences are “so overwhelming,” and constrastingly “here, you get a chance to meet with people one on one, you get to know them a lot better. You get to have real Argentinian food made by professionals.” For Tatiana, the Citadel Theory summit is “a really great model. I wish I was going with you to Córdoba and the other places…”
Daniel teaches about Bitcoin and travels the world “promoting understanding of Bitcoin and related ideas.” According to him, in small events “you get a handful of great quality people from all over the world.” He prefers them, because “you don’t have to be as formal and focused on networking, you can have that direct connection with someone and share the experience.”
The Citadel Theory Summit Lectures
In the living room, there was a gigantic coffee table with comfortable seats three-quarters of the way around. In front of the setup, there was a large TV connected to different laptops. The Citadel Theory summit lectures were the main event for many and an asterisk for those not interested. Attention was not mandatory. Throughout the two days, the topics discussed included:
- Jon Chenot opened the floor and told everyone about Citadel Theory as a project.
- Svetski described his plans for Satlantis, an everything app for “freedom seeking creators and nomads.”
- Paul Keating told his Bitcoin story and gave the crowd an exclusive sneak peek at the powerful new version of Primal.
- Frank Zap presented an inside tour of Nostr and described his plans for Zapstore, a Nostr-based app store.
- Lorena Gallardo Fernandez revealed Argentina’s secrets on residency, tax, and legal strategies.
- Micael Margiotta told everyone about the Argentinian Bitcoin scene and the opportunities the country provides, and he also presented his book The Great Parasite.
- Camilo shared the story of Aleph Citadel and was very straightforward with the project’s wins, failures, and current state.
After each lecture, the participants engaged in the kind of spirited discussions that Bitcoin inspires. Drinks and food constantly circulated. Bitcoin luminaries, entrepreneurs, and interesting people arrived and left without warning.
The Citadel Scouts Argentina Event Per Se
Ben Woosley strategically described the appeal of Citadel Scouts Argentina, “We’re verging on the possibility of a substantial new development in the Bitcoin space which involves amassing more real state as a container for culture and for propagating the new culture. The interest of this gathering points in that direction and I find it particularly relevant.”
He is a software developer. His work in Bitcoin began with Lightning Network software, more specifically the Zap Desktop wallet. Woosley contributed to Bitcoin Core from 2018 to 2022.
Aniko Puhova is a Slovakian health coach. She teaches “how to keep the body, mind, and spirit in balance” and has “attended a couple of conferences; went to Miami twice, El Salvador, Amsterdam.” “I didn’t really know what I was signing for,” she said referring to the Citadel Theory event. “I joined the guys for the Códoba trip. I knew there was a lot of Bitcoin here, but I didn’t know what was going to happen. I really like it, it’s amazing. Everybody is super nice.”
Author of The Great Parasite, Micael Margiotta started the Somos Crudos podcast five months ago. He dedicates “a lot of time to studying the financial system,” which he sees as the problem behind Bitcoin’s reason to be. “In order to understand the solution, we need to understand the problem.”
According to Micael, side events like “Citadel Scouts Argentina” usually involve “value-aligned” participants, and “you get the chance to start new projects or fuse different projects.” This one in particular “was very productive. We had great speakers from great projects adding different perspectives. I didn’t have a particular expectation, but it was better than I thought.”
Let’s Talk About Bitcoin Citadels
The “Citadel Scouts Argentina” event focused on “Bitcoin adoption strategy, investment exploration, and citadel scouting adventure.” As the organizers, Citadel Theory’s mission is “a network archipelago of interdependent breakaway communities” and its vision is “a citadel in every city.”
Naturally, the topic of citadels came up. The answers will ignite imaginations and bring forth the infinite possibilities this concept brings.
Daniel Shares The Historical Precedents
In our past, there are successful citadel experiments to inspire us. “You do have this rich history of places like Florence, or Pisa, or Lucca forming their own little city states with a wall around the city,” Daniel explains. “People could move between them and decide what set of rules they wanted, and there was a higher degree of sovereignty. The city states had an incentive to treat people well, because they wanted to attract them.”
At present, there are modern versions of the same idea. “Then you see that to another extent in microstates like Dubai and Singapore, they’re intentionally making policies that draw people, and these places look incredible compared to where they were in the past and other parts of the world.”
Daniel closes optimistically, “I like that people took this citadel idea in different directions and ran with it.”
Paul Keating Already Lives The Citadel Dream
This description of life in Bitcoin Jungle could make anyone with similar priorities pack their bags to follow Paul. “To some extent, I live in a Bitcoin citadel half the year and I’m fully living it. I spend in Bitcoin, I earn in Bitcoin. I don’t touch Fiat. I have fresh organic fruit, grass fed meat, raw milk, good waves. What else do I want? There’s nothing else I want. I want to live my bankless dream in a place with warm water, waves, and cool people, and I’m living that.”
But enough about Paul, you could live the citadel dream yourself right now. “To some extent, you can brute force it to happen right now. With all the tools that are online, like Bitrefil, you can say bye to the old world if you put some effort into it.”
However, things could get even better. There’s still a long way to go. “I’m looking forward to absolute badass citadels all around the world before I’m dead. To raise my kids in.”
Citadels In Practice: Tatiana Provides The Counterpoint
Make no mistake, independence is a hard road and dangers abound. “I would like to be in a citadel,” Tatiana clarifies, “but what I’ve experienced personally is that there’s very little accountability, and everybody is drinking the hopium, and it leaves a lot of opportunities for scammers to come in and exploit the fact that people say they believe in the same thing.”
She has personal experience on the matter and believes “when you tell people somebody is a scammer; if they’re a good speaker, or if they’re good looking, or if they have a lot of charisma, everybody doesn’t want to believe you.”
However, Tatiana suspects humanity could solve those problems. “What I’m looking for in those kinds of communities is an awareness of that, and a plan in order to avoid those kinds of problems in the future.” What kinds of plans? How do we proceed? “By creating different kinds of agreements that people are willing to participate in, and also conflict resolution rules they are willing to abide by. That’s the way you can mitigate some of those issues.”
She thinks the citadels will be necessary in the not-so-distant future: “I anticipate a large global system collapse.” The disaster’s result could have “a potential silver lining,” which is “forcing these kinds of experiments to become a reality.”
When that happens, Tatiana thinks we will need “good leadership. I know that we’re all into decentralization, but in this case you need leadership.” A crucial part of the process will be “selecting the right people from the beginning,” which is “important, and also fraught with peril.”
In any case, we “have to try, and even if we make some mistakes along the way, hopefully, people learn from that.”
Ben Believes In Distributed Citadels
Synchronisticaly, a few days later Ben gave a talk at Labitconf called “Bitcoin and the network state.” It was based on Balaji S. Srinivasan’s book “The Network State: How To Start a New Country” and it was all about citadels.
“The fortress notion is unrealistic, impractical, and not secure. It hasn’t been since Constantinople fell in the 1300s.” This goes against everything we’ve been discussing… or does it? “One of my thesis is that the citadel will necessarily be distributed, which is not to say that you won’t have points of gathering, but they won’t be tightly held,” Ben explained.
Through software and a Bitcoin-like decentralized architecture, humanity could use “the concept of The Network State to articulate cultural network associations that enable collaboration across space and time. People can gather in places like this temporarily, but we’re not heavily relying on these bases or established cultural centers.”
Micael And Aniko Are Optimistic
According to Aniko, humanity has to will citadels into existence. “We have to make it happen. It only depends on us. I was looking for that kind of community, with like-minded values for a long time and didn’t really find it. I support the idea, hopefully we’re going to make it happen. It depends on us. The teamwork is the dream work.”
Equally optimistic but through a practical lens, Micael explains how he sees it. “It’s happening right now, right here. From the philosophical perspective, from the practical perspective, all the legal stuff. Always thinking big, but starting small. Starting with a MVP, and then expanding from there. You learn while doing, that’s why it’s so important to start with something and expand from there.”
He closes it with a quote from the man behind Citadel Theory, “I will steal this one from Jon, he always says that your community is the foundation of your citadel.”
That idea could summarize this whole article and serve as a killer conclusion, so that’s where we leave it.
