Picture the scene a few decades from now: a new blue and gold flag is fluttering outside the United Nations, the SOLAR currency is going great guns in the stock market… oh, and huge £100bn space arcs filled with 15,000 people circumnavigate the globe, while the first human colony has been established on the moon.
That is the vision of Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, a Russian-Azerbaijani billionaire and head of the newest nation on earth: Asgardia.
If this is already sounding a little far-fetched, consider Dr Ashurbeyli’s incredulous reaction when I ask him when his dream will become a reality. “It already is a reality,” insists the 55-year-old, in the suite of a five-star hotel in Vienna, where his government gathered last week for its first executive congress.
And there are plenty of other believers. At the last count, Asgardia has 18,308 residents who have paid a 100 Euro annual citizenship fee and a ‘population’ of more than 1m who have registered their details online.
Joe Shute, senior feature writer The Telegraph