Opt-Out of the system:
How to achieve both economic and personal freedom by being global & flexible
Crypto liberation story of one perpetual traveler
Let me introduce myself
- Perpetual traveler following the flag theory never living anywhere more than a half of the year
- Cryptoanarchist & voluntaryist focused on technology and society hacking
- IT security guy, founder of IT security hacking companies (Nethemba, Hacktrophy) & contemporary art (Satori)
- Co-founder of Bratislava's and Prague's hackerspaces (Progressbar & Paralelni Polis)
- Member of Czech contemporary anti-government artistic group Ztohoven
- Responsible for many activist liberation projects hcpp.cz, liberation.travel, www.nepracujemeprestat.sk, www.nepracujemeprostat.cz, www.internetbezcenzury.sk
Just living is not enough... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
Hans Christian Andersen
If you want to achieve more freedom in your life in your society, you have multiple options...
Vote every 4 years with the weight of your vote less than 1 to 1 000 000
Be activist, organize anti-corruption demonstrations & petitions for better government
Become politician & change it from inside
Opt out of the system
- Don't wait for an approval from democratic masses
- Just be global & flexible and grasp the technology & legislation possibilities
How to achieve both economic and personal freedom using globality and flexibility.
- Choose the suitable country for your permanent residency.
- Choose the suitable country for your company.
- Eliminate the center of interest in your home country (divorce, sell all your properties, become homeless).
- Close your bank accounts
- Switch to crypto, prefer truly anonymous cryptocurrencies, embrace crypto friendly services.
- Choose your global healthcare insurance.
- Choose your world mobile operator.
- Embrace sharing economy.
- Help your friends to opt out of the system and move them to a parallel society.
Why to change your permanent residency?
- Permanent residency (unlike your citizenship) in the EU countries binds you with a lot of obligations:
- mandatory military service (e.g. in Slovakia)
- mandatory health care & social insurance (in the most countries)
- tax residency (it should be in the country where you stay more than half year - it is difficult to prove in Shengen area where you are the most of your time)
- taxation of all your income
- including foreign income
- including all your crypto profits!
Where to choose the permanent residence
- Prefer the countries with territorial taxation (Costa Rica, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Singapore...for the complete list see )
- Prefer the countries with double treaty agreements with your home country if you want to do business with your home-country customers in order to avoid withholding tax
-
- if you are Czech citizen: Hong Kong, Malaysia, Panama, Singapore
- if you are Slovak citizen: Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore
Why did I decide for Panama?
- I have a lot of good friends in Panama
- I know Spanish
- Slovakia (as well most countries in the Europe) is on Panamian "friendly list" http://www.panama-offshore-services.com/panama_friendly_nations_visa.htm
- It has a nice territorial taxation
- It has no central bank
- It is quite easy to start a new Panamian company
- It is the safest country in Central America
- It is a quite developed with a stable good weather
- It makes especially sense if you are retired (offering you a lot of discounts :-)
- It is a great country for digital nomads
My Panamanian ID (cedula)
My Panamanian driving license
- You don't need to return your EU driving license
- It is valid in all countries of the world (Panama didn't sign an agreement about international driving licenses)
- From the next year, Slovak police may confiscate your Slovak driving license if you have any unpaid taxes (e.g. "dog tax"), but cannot confiscate the non-EU legal document
Why did I decide for Paraguay?
- It is also a territorial taxation country (like Panama), they did not sign CRS sagreement and have good extradition law too
- Thanks to Mercosur (something like Shengen) using Paraguayan ID you can get to almost all South American countries
- It is easier and cheaper to obtain it than in Panama
- Because of the pandemic, now the whole immigration process for permanent residency can be done remotely! It is necessary just to pick up your national ID
- Three different options to get the Paraguayan residency:
- The proof you have 70000 USD somewhere in your bank account
- Deposit approx 6000 USD in the Paraguayan national bank
- Use your European university degree (even bachelor one is sufficient)
Benefits of having no permanent residency in the EU
- You make it harder for your home-country government to be in in touch with you in an effective way (e.g. they have to send all necessary requests, fines, etc. e.g. to your Panamian address -> in Panama there is no central state service, so they need to use an expensive courier :-)
- But if you need anything from your government, it's still easy - just use your two Slovak passports...
- Changing your permanent residency back to your home EU country is easy and you can do it anytime especially when your family or your company owns a property (just make a new rental agreement with you and ask back for your EU residence)
Other options I was considering
- Malaysia (It has a tax double treaty with Slovakia, the maximum limit of taxation in Labuan http://labuantax.com/, but it is not possible to gain the "real" permanent residence there, just multiple entry visas, there is a censorship, strict regime)
- Singapore, Dubai, Saudi Arabia (they are 'too strict' and unfree countries for me)
- Nicaragua (Not very safe now)
- Costa Rica (You need to buy a property, too expensive and full of "gringos" :-)
Choose the suitable country for your company?
- The question "Where are your customers?"
- If they are out of the EU, it doesn't make sense to have a company in the EU, use any offshore destination....
- If they are in the EU, consider Cyprus (the least income tax 12.5%) or Estonia (they have 20% income tax, but you have to pay taxes only if you want to withdraw money from your company - everything can be managed online and remotely)
- It doesn't make sense to have any EU company if you have no physical office there and therefore it is impossible to prove where "the work is physically done" (e.g. you provide virtual services to your customers) -> move it to Cyprus or Estonia and avoid stupid bureaucracy
Why should I leave my company from Slovakia / Czech Republic?
- High taxes and social & healthcare insurance
- Unstable environment for entrepreneurs (often changing every election)
- A lot of privacy dangerous laws:
- the government wants to have an access to all companies' bank accounts without the court order!
- they have a right to enter your company place (without your acceptance) in order to follow "safety rules" (even if you are just one entrepreneur)
- Corrupted tax system & courts (but unfortunately only for "privileged ones"), e.g. in Czech Republic the tax office preemptively freezes bank accounts of innocent companies often leading to their bankrupt
Eliminate the center of your interest in your home country
- Give up your permanent residency (this is must to do)
- Leave your official job in your home country
- Divorce (or persuade your partner to change her/his permanent residency too)
- Sell all your properties (e.g. to your offshore company that may be anonymous)
- Sell all your companies (e.g. to your offshore company)
- Become perpetual traveler (ideally if you can prove that you are more than a half year out of your home country)
- Become homeless with no obligations and no risk of government's seizure
Close your bank accounts
- Remember with the bank account you are always easily tracked and monitored by the government
- If it is not possible to close all your bank accounts and live from crypto only, close at least your bank accounts in your home country and switch to global services (e.g. Revolut, N26)
- Slovak/Czech governments will want a full access to your bank accounts (without the court order)
- Check my older presentation "Achieving financial freedom using cryptocurrencies"
- Remember there is NO COUNTRY WITH BANK SECRECY anymore, when you expect privacy, use truly anonymous cryptocurrencies only
- As the company in the EU you don't need to have a bank account in your home country, use Business Revolut
Switch to crypto, prefer truly anonymous cryptocurrencies
- Prefer Monero for your anonymous savings
- Use xmr.to (Monerujo) to pay all your expenses in bitcoins
- Use lamium.io / simplecoin.eu to pay your fiat invoices
- Use Bitcoin debit cards (e.g. Bitwala, WireX, crypto.com)
- There are 176 of places just in Prague where you can use crypto
- Register all your new companies at cryptoexchanges (e.g. kraken.com, bitstamp.net, simplecoin.eu, ...) and try to exist without bank accounts at all (you can still receive your fiat payments through bitwage.com)
- Be aware that all official crypto exchanges have to follow KYC/AML, if you don't like it, try decentralized crypto exchanges (bisq, HodlHodl)
Choose your global healthcare insurance
- Your obligatory "European" insurance is usually valid in Europe only
- There a lot of global purely private heath care insurance companies (Cigna, Aetna, Premier Health, Allianz, BUPA International health plan, Seven Cornes...)
- It is global (except of the US), usually you pay everything in cash, and then you just ask for reimbursement
- In case of serious medical injury/operation, you can ask money before
- Be global & flexible (in Hungary there are cheapest dentists, in Czech Republic eye surgery, ..)
- I used SafetyWing.com, now IMGGlobal and AlpenVerein.at
Choose your world mobile operator
- There are many companies offering international SIM cards (OneSim, WorldSIM, KeepGo, GoSIM, KnowRoaming, GigSky,..)
- My candidate is Google Project FI
- I use Unlimited program - for 45 USD have unlimited calls, SMS text messages and data (with FUP 22 GB) in almost all countries (!)
- You can obtain & activate it in the US only (but then it works everywhere)
- If you don't trust Google, just use its transport layer and use end-to-end encryption all the time
- Check my article "How to be online everywhere in the world and make/receive calls for local rates – with just one phone!"
Anonymous global mobile operators
- There are three known global mobile operators offering you global data where it is possible to buy data eSIMs in an anonymous way:
- SurfRoam https://surfroam.com/products/surfroam-esim-global
- OneSimCard https://www.onesimcard.com/
- eSIM2Fly https://esim2fly.com/
- Probably 3x more expensive than Google FI, but it can be paid by bitcoins (= it can be anonymous)
- For more information, read https://steemit.com/global/@digital-liberty/mobile-anonymity-during-pandemic-police-state
Obtain the local phone number in almost any country
- Use hushed.com
- Use local rates in the given country
- It is quite anonymous (when you use Google Play coupons instead of your credit card)
- For US/Canadian number you can even receive/send SMS text messages
- Ideal solution when some service requires a local number
- Use cloning app (like Duplex, Dual Space, ..) with your hushed.com number:
- to stay as much anonymous as possible (you can route all traffic to Tor/I2P from these apps) & to have your alter identity at Signal/WhatsApp/Facebook Messenger/...
Embrace sharing economy
- Use global working places (Regus.com, WeWork.com, ..)
- Use global temporary car rental companies (Car2Go.com, DriveNow.com) or local ones (Car4way in Prague, up! city in Bratislava)
- Use bike sharing systems (I am registered in 10 bike sharing systems in Berlin, 4 in Prague, 3 in Bratislava, in Vienna, Amsterdam, Dublin, ...)
-
Check possibilities of the local sharing economy in your country
A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.
Jim Morrison
Help your friends to opt out of the system and move them to a parallel society
- Explain to your friends:
- They can gain a lot of new freedom when they move their permanent residency and/or company and start to use cryptocurrencies
- This is a real deal, "voting" for "finally good" political candidates or trying to change the political situation in their country usually does not improve their lives effectively and just now
- Being flexible & global at the same time, you can achieve new kind of freedom
It so complex and horrible, should I do it? Of course!
The secret to happiness is freedom... And the secret to freedom is courage.
Thucydides
Embrace the new digital world with no borders!
Text
Become New Rich (NR):
Abandon the deferred-life plan and replace luxury lifestyles in the present with the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility.
My new book:
Opt-out of the system:
My Crypto Liberation story
Achieving both economic and personal freedom by being global and flexible
Soon at Amazon.com