A man spent millions on an plot of land near Reno. Now he wants to build a community based on the blockchain technology introduced by Bitcoin.
He imagines a sort of experimental community spread over about a hundred square miles, where houses, schools, commercial districts and production studios will be built. The centerpiece of this giant project will be the blockchain, a new kind of database that was introduced by Bitcoin.
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“I don’t know why,” he said over the roar of the Polaris engine. “I just — something inside me tells me this is the answer, that if we can get enough people to trust the blockchain, we can begin to change all the systems we operate by.”
Mr. Berns has managed to win over local officials who are eager for economic development. Nevada’s governor, Brian Sandoval, read a proclamation that named the Blockchains property “Innovation Park” at an event last month where Mr. Berns sat on a panel with the governor and Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla.
Tesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada, which has been described as the largest building in the world, is surrounded by Blockchains’ land. Companies like Google, Apple and Switch also have properties in the industrial park that is surrounded by Mr. Berns’s holdings.
This week, he announced a memorandum of understanding with one of the state’s main power companies, NV Energy, to team up on projects that will run energy transactions through a blockchain.
The Nevada county where this is all located, Storey County, has only about 4,000 residents and was best known, until recently, for its history of silver mining and its modern brothels, including one owned by a county commissioner.
That same county commissioner, Lance Gilman, bought the land surrounding the brothel and turned it into the industrial park where Tesla and Google are now located.
