Two reasons: Firstly we have had a high level of requests for a travel document from our citizens either via our social media channels and on the consider.it community proposal application on our website.
Secondly we are acutely aware that new voluntary nations such as Bitnation will need to navigate the the legacy world of mandatory nation state governance during a transition to a decentralised world in which millions of opt-in geographical and virtual nations will coexist side-by-side. A travel document provides a means by which our citizens can declare their preference and, critically, help us test our jurisdiction and gain recognition from nation states for citizens to exercise self-sovereignty.
We are at the beginning of a journey toward creating a world of opt-in nations and governance service providers, and as such Bitnation is not currently recognised as by any of the current nation-state signatories to the Vienna Convention on passports. Thus we strongly recommend that you use your nation-state passport alongside your Bitnation diplomatic passport when attempting to cross borders.
That said, we are working on gaining recognition from a number of smaller nation states and intentional communities. We expect over time - with the assistance of our diplomatic passport holders - to have our travel documents accepted for entering and leaving a number of jurisdictions, perhaps in lieu of normal visas.
Our diplomatic passports can also serve as a laissez passer (an organisational travel document similar to that issued by the U.N. and other international organisations) for undocumented or stateless peoples and official Bitnation representatives. The passport is also valid as a photo ID in many jurisdictions. Although you should be aware that it does not carry the same level of recognition as most nation-state passports.
Since the company producing passports for us manufacture these for many countries they have a system in place where data is deleted after the passport is sent out. We don't store any biodata, all we retain is the passport number linked to your public key on our software, so the passport reflects your ID on the system, and the hash on the Ethereum chain, to track provenance.
Obviously when you use the passport to cross a border the data will be entered into a database in the county of arrival, so we've tried to minimise biometric data to the minimum allowed by the Vienna Convention standards.
A diplomatic passport implies that the holder is an official representative of the issuing nation. As we are right at the beginning of our process of testing our jurisdiction with nation states and gaining recognition, we want to ensure that all our passport holders are committed to a level of Bitnation representation beyond basic citizenship. For that reason we reserve the right to select holders, and to that end conduct a simple briefing and interview before making a decision on issuing a diplomatic passport.
We plan to issue a standard passport for citizens and an ID card in 2019/2020, after we have tested jurisdictions with our diplomatic passports.
Currently the passport application needs to take place on our website, but longer term, the plan is to migrate the whole process to the app - which will ensure its encrypted and data is under your control.
You will need to buy US$149 in XPAT (on Bancor, LAToken or other exchanges) and pay that fee before you are interviewed. In the unlikely event that you are not selected for a passport your fee will be returned after the interview.
The reason for non-acceptance of a passport would mainly be if you intend to use it recklessly, endangering the passport program and Bitnation’s reputation.
Please don't hesitate to join our Telegram Group for further questions and guidance.
Safe Travels!
#BlockchainsNotBorders
The Bitnation Team
