All speakers were pro-liberty and against regulation.
A half-dozen liberty activists from Keene carpooled up to the Legislative Office Building in Concord yesterday for the first publicly-attended meeting of the New Hampshire state house “Commission to Study Cryptocurrency”.
The audience was filled with mostly liberty-friendly folks. There were a few lobbyists present, but the only one who spoke was Darryl W Perry of the new Liberty Lobby LLC. The overall message from the speakers was against any regulations whatsoever, and the chairman of the committee, Representative John Hunt of Rindge, spoke favorably of the free market and seemed against any regulations. There was only one real proponent of regulation, Maryam Torben-Desfosses. She was representing the NH Banking Department and it’s her job to regulate, so it’s no surprise she was there speaking in favor.
The goal of the commission is to either recommend for or against regulation of cryptocurrency. After hearing from several speakers, the commission scheduled its next meeting for October 6th at 10am, room 302 of the Legislative Office Building in Concord.
It’s not a coincidence that New Hampshire has arguably the highest concentration of bitcoin and crypto-friendly people anywhere. For more than a decade there have been active migrations of libertarian, voluntarist, and liberty anarchists moving to New Hampshire. Many of these movers are activists who are into alternative currencies and the bitcoin community here has exploded as a result.
The oldest migration of libertarians to New Hampshire is the Free State Project, which as of September 2016 boasts nearly 2,000 participants already in New Hampshire, with 18,000 more pledged to move by the year 2021. There’s also the more decentralized Shire Society which has been encouraging liberty-loving people to declare their personal independence and move to “The Shire” since 2010.
These early movers are not only users of bitcoin, but are also some of the key developers and creators of the bitcoin world. Liberty migrants to New Hampshire created the iconic, most-installed-in-the-world Lamassu bitcoin vending machine in Manchester. Some are developing the evolutionary “Open Bazaar” and “LBRY” software. Decentralized ride-sharing app “Arcade City” has also sprung up just this year, and within a week of it being announced, signed up 1000 drivers worldwide. Arcade City founder and liberty migrant Christopher David said, “With its libertarian leanings and an influx of free staters, New Hampshire is perfectly positioned to become a major hub for bitcoin and blockchain startups. That’s a big reason why I moved here.”
Bitcoin Outreach Booth at the Cheshire Fair
Here are some more fun facts about the burgeoning bitcoin scene in the Shire: Manchester is home to the world’s longest-running weekly bitcoin meetup, plus regular meetups are being held in Keene and the Seacoast. According to Overstock.com, the highest concentration of their bitcoin orders comes from New Hampshire. Plus, you can actually use bitcoin in real life here, at mom-n-pop businesses like “Corner News”, “Local Burger”, and multiple food trucks in Keene, plus “Pizza 911”, “Dancing Lion Chocolate”, and more in Manchester. It turns out that Keene, the Southwestern NH city of 23,000 people, even outdoes San Francisco in amount of bitcoin-accepting business per capita! Take a look at CoinMap.org to see the dozens of New Hampshire businesses that are taking crypto!
New Hampshire also boasts New England’s only public Bitcoin Vending Machines (BVM), connecting people with bitcoin from as far away as New York and Boston. (more…)
LRN.FM – The Liberty Radio Network, airs the best liberty-oriented audio shows 24/7 online and via satellite. Our current satellite coverage includes North and Central America and Sub-Saharan Africa. The signal is “Free-to-Air”, which means anyone in the coverage area can receive our signal for no monthly cost, providing they have the dish and receiver, which are very affordable. We’ve been on the American satellite since 2010 and have had a signal in Africa since 2012.
Last year we did our first Satellite Fundraiser to gauge the level of support that our listeners have for the platform. While this year’s LRN.FM Satellite Fundraiser did not garner as much in USD as last year’s, we had nearly as many contributors, and that was without the benefit of having a campaign pitch video, like we did last year. (The FBI took the video files in the March raid on the LRN.FM studio in Keene.)
In 2015 we had 46 contributions on Indiegogo, amounting to $4,925. However, $2550 of that came from two individuals. Factoring out those two mega-contributors, the average contribution was about $54. This year we had 40 contributions on Indiegogo for a total of $1760, meaning the average contribution was down a bit to $44.
In addition to the $1760 given at Indiegogo, there were three bitcoin contributions this year, totaling 0.26568 BTC, which is worth about $154 at current exchange rates.
Something new I tried this year that I believe was a mistake was the “Headtalker” campaign that ate up two weeks of potential fundraising right in the beginning. (more…)
Porcfest wasn’t totally square this year – thankfully they still welcomed underground drug marketplace Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht’s mother Lyn as a featured speaker. Vlogger Tarrin Lupo recorded this interview with her:
Now that the voters of Britain have voted to leave the European Union, the world is abuzz with talk of secession. Other countries in the EU may now also hold similar referendums and here in the US, the Texas secessionists (long the most noteworthy independence movement in North America) have been garnering press coverage for a “Texit”. New Hampshire activists have been promoting secession for a few years via the Foundation for NH Independence and the NH Liberty Party. We’re ready to move ahead with #NHexit if some politicians can show enough backbone to get behind the idea and put forward a serious proposal to the people of the Shire.
However, in both Texas and NH we have a long way to go. I think we need a little friendly competition between Texas and New Hampshire to help move things along. While the Texas secessionists have been at it a while, they are not advocates of freedom. Many of them want a theocracy and are xenophobic, so if they were to get their way, it would likely lead Texas to being even more of a police state.
NH, on the other hand, continues to have liberty-minded activists move in, many of whom are very interested in NH leaving the United States. We have the most principled, pro-liberty secession movement out there and it will only get stronger.
Secession NOW!
Here’s a message from Dave Ridley, the founder of the new NHexit group here in the Shire:
If UK can do it to EU, why can’t NH can do it to DC?
In 1788 New Hampshire tried to become part of a dream…a Federal system which made to her many of the same kinds of promises which the EU made to Britain. But many New Hampshirites, like Britons, have experienced growing disillusion with the ever-bloating central government they joined. It has become a bloodthirsty empire to which they now find themselves tightly bound.
Faced with a more humane government at Brussels than the Washington regimes have ruled us, British voters nevertheless chose to walk away. How much more justified New Hampshire’s departure would be…from the murderous wannabe globe-rulers in DC. (more…)
Last year, our first-ever fundraiser raised enough to keep our African satellite on-the-air. This year, the Indiegogo-based fundraiser is going to be promoted via a “headtalker” – a website that allows you to sign up to join in a social media blast to promote something. Sign up here via your preferred social media and then on Independence Day, July 4th the headtalker will post to your social media about our fundraiser. We’ve set a goal of 200 people – can you be one of them?
