The crypto community in Bratislava will now have a new centre where to meet and discuss different issues about virtual currencies and the space. Opened in October, the centre has been growing as a place to discuss surveillance infrastructures, relentless taxation and the adoption of blockchain technology by different agencies and institutions.

Pavol Luptak, crypto activist and the co-founder of the Paralelni Polis in Bratislava and Prague, said that it is necessary to search for a return to the ‘political vision’ that was related to Bitcoin (BTC) when it was born 10 years ago. He calls for users to start focusing on virtual currencies in a way that would help liberate individuals from state control.

Pavol is also a cypherpunk which stands as a radical alternative to the current banking system. During a conversation with CoinDesk he talked about Bitcoin as a way to liberate the society and protect it against the negative impact of political decision and democracies.

Luptak considers hat Paralelni Polis is a ‘freedom think-tank’ that allows people to discuss these ideas and promote them. Paralelni Polis is a place for meetups, education, co-working space and more. It is also possible to purchase a coffee with virtual currencies if desired.

Luptak commented about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology:

“We use crypto technologies to keep our community safe and eliminate any negative impacts of political decisions made by politicians and the democratic masses. We are a minority, and we use crypto technologies to build our own parallel society with the same or similar-minded people. That’s why we have the Paralelni Polis.”

It is important to mention that the name used by the centre is related to the political dissident Vaclav Benda. He was a member of the activist group Charter 77 that fought against the socialist government in the late 70’s.

Benda argued that protesting was not a good way to change the system. Instead, he expected people to create parallel institutions that would offer a better alternative for humans. Luptak mentioned that Benda defined a free system as the one that is able to tolerate a parallel system.

Luptak aims at creating a new parallel society that would help people stop noticing that there is such as thing as a state. Paralelni Polis had a very positive impact in Prague since it is one of the cities with the largest number of Bitcoin-friendly places.

Prague is also one of the most important Bitcoin cities in the world. According to data provided by CoinMap, Prague has the most Bitcoin-accepting vendors in the world. Other cities in the list include Buenos Aires, San Francisco and Madrid.

According to Luptak, the Czech Republic is a complete financial surveilled country. At the same time, the use of cash is widely discouraged as a means of payment all over the European Union (EU).

Individuals are not able to spend €15,000 in cash and companies cannot spend more than €5,000. Individuals cannot transport more than €10,000 without declaring them. Moreover, there is a new law known as Electronic Evidence of Transaction (EET) that allows every cash transaction to be digitalized and immediately sent to the tax office.

However, Luptak believes that as these systems become more expensive, people would move towards virtual currencies.

Furthermore, he mentioned that Paralelni Polis launched prediction markets on the Ethereum-based platform Augur to expose sensitive information about politicians. Moreover, the group is also using blockchain technology to store evidence of governmental corruption.

When they opened the Paralelni Polis centre in Bratislava, Luptak talked about a future without governmental control. Through decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) it would be possible to replace traditional governance.

In a future where decentralized organizations take the leading role in how to organize the society, politicians will be completely displaced. Additionally, the developer Frank Braun said that they want to build an unobservable and non-attributable economy from scratch.

Braun explains that crypto-anarchy is subversive and it wants to build a new space outside the society. So as to build an alternative, he says, it is necessary to be separated from the rest. He then criticized the mainstream adoption strategy saying that several of the newcomers do not share the crypto’s underlying political ramifications.

The new centre in Bratislava is currently not completely legal but the team wants to have it already registered as soon as possible. Luptak explained that they are registered as a non-profit organization because in some way they need to interact with the fiscal world.

Police officers entered the new centre in Bratislava and asked to turn down the music. Luptak explained that this is the first conflict that they have with the police and they will for sure have other conflictive situations int he future.

To end the conversation, Luptak said:

“If you live in a physical world and have a physical place, you will be always vulnerable to the state power and its interactions.”

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