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Thailand wants us killed: Bitcoin couple Nadia Summergirl and Chad Elwartowski who lived in ocean shack

  • Supranee Thepdet and Chad Elwartowski envisaged a world without governments when they went to live on a tiny oil rig-like structure 14 nautical miles out to sea
  • But the dream went south when the Thai navy showed up to accuse them of establishing a breakaway nation

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The Seasteading Institute Facebook
Jitsiree Thongnoi
No markets, no capitalism, no governments, no rent. That was the dream when Nadia Summergirl and her boyfriend Chad Elwartowski decided to swap their former lives as bitcoin investors for a life at sea, setting up in an isolated shack 14 nautical miles off the coast of Thailand.

And things had seemed to be going so smoothly – until Saturday, that is, when the Thai navy turned up to accuse them of trying to establish a breakaway nation, an offence punishable by death.

Summergirl, whose real name is Supranee Thepdet, and her boyfriend were the poster couple of seasteading, whose proponents envisage escaping nations and laws by living on floating islands in international waters.

Supranee Thepdet and Chad Elwartowski. Photo: The Seasteading Institute Facebook
Supranee Thepdet and Chad Elwartowski. Photo: The Seasteading Institute Facebook

About a month ago, the couple filmed themselves as a fishing boat towed out their tiny, oil-rig like structure from the shores of Phuket and headed into the Andaman Sea. In doing so, they became the first couple to live out the vision of the Seasteading Institute, a self-styled “non-profit think-tank promoting the creation of floating ocean cities as a revolutionary solution to some of the world’s most pressing problems: rising sea levels, overpopulation, poor governance”.

Unfortunately for them, the idea appeared a little too revolutionary to the Royal Thai Navy Third Area Command officers who landed on their tiny hexagonal shack to accuse them of using the proceeds of bitcoin deals to establish a micronation that could “have negative repercussions” on Thailand’s shoreline, even though it is technically two miles beyond Thai sovereignty, in international waters.
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