If bitcoin’s true believers ever found their tax-free libertarian utopia, Christopher Ellis could be in charge of the passport office.

Ellis has built software that lets anyone create what he calls a “World Citizenship” passport. Using PGP encryption software and the bitcoin blockchain—a cryptographically secured public ledger that runs on machines across the internet—the project creates a mathematically iron-clad identification paper that would be extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to fake.

This is the next generation of bitcoin. It came of age as a digital currency, but developers are pushing the blockchain and blockchain-like technologies into whole new areas. Last month, a project called Ethereum raised $15 million, promising to use a blockchain clone to provide distributed computing resources. And Overstock.com announced a plan to use the blockchain for an online stock exchange.

In the spirit of bitcoin, people, not nation-states, would issue… READ MORE