Estonia flung open its digital borders last week. The eastern European country invited anyone, anywhere, to open a bank account or start a business. By the end of the year, anyone with an internet connection will be able to live their financial life in Estonia, all without being physically present.
Such e-residency, as it is known, is a step towards a world where a person's online identity matters just as much as their offline identity; where the location of data, rather than documents, is more important.
“This is the beginning of the erosion of the classic nation state hegemony,” says John Clippinger, a digital identity researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It's going to get whittled away from the margins.”
Getting e-residency in Estonia will require going there to have your identity verified – and fingerprints and face biometrics taken by border police. But Kotka says they are working on letting people sign up at Estonian embassies.
For more on offshore banking and offshore companies see
here and
here respectively.