What is Montelibero?
Montelibero is a social experiment to move libertarians to Montenegro and build a free society in Montenegro on libertarian principles.
What are those principles? In a nutshell: free market and non-aggression.
If you value human life, honour private property, respect other people's skills and honest business, only want the state to leave you alone, and generally believe that state creates more problems than it solves - it is quite likely that you are a libertarian, even if this is the first time you have read this word.
Community growth
The first Montelibero settlers arrived in Montenegro in December 2021. The rapid growth of the community happened after the beginning of the hot phase of the war in Ukraine. Now the inflow of emigrants from Russia has slowed down and we are mainly growing with the diaspora. We are also being joined by people from over-regulated EU countries, primarily Germany.
Development
Libertarianism is about the entrepreneurial spirit. In a free market, the more you succeed, the more you benefit others. Success can be measured in terms of money or social capital.
Many of the Montelibero participants have already launched some business. On a separate wiki page we have tried to collected a list of those we know. If your business is not included, just add yourself there.
Also there are many projects focused not on the profit, but on improving the infrastructure of Montelibero. More about these projects later, now a few words about our economic engine:
Tokenomics
What is it? In short: it is an economy based on the exchange of tokens, i.e. entries in a public ledger describing certain property rights. It is better to get acquainted with a more detailed description, it will be useful to you anyway.
We try to describe almost all our economic relations through tokenomics. Why? Because it turned out to be a convenient bridge between online and offline, as the project participants live not only in Montenegro, but all over the world.
Now let's get back to infrastructure projects.
EURMTL
Montenegro uses the euro, but the country is not officially part of the Eurozone. As a result, banking services here are quite limited. EURMTL is our stablecoin pegged to the euro, and we use it among ourselves instead of cashless payments. For example, to split a bill at a café.
The backing for EURMTL consists of regular euro cash (which is held in small amounts by our treasurers) as well as other liquid assets like Bitcoin. The treasurers are responsible for storing the cash, exchanging it to and from EURMTL without fees, and conducting periodic audits.
MTL
In the early days of Montelibero, there were little money in the project, so we pooled it together in our investment fund. MTL tokens represent shares of the fund. The fund coordinates the EURMTL system and many other tokenomics instruments. It is managed by the top twenty largest shareholders.
The main goal of the fund is to attract money from around the world and invest it in the development of the Montelibero project — both in business and infrastructure. Over time, other funds with different goals and management structures have also emerged in Montelibero.
MTL-breakfasts and lunches
While the Montelibero Investment Fund raises money from all over the world, in Montenegro itself activists are attracting people who have heard something about the project and would like to meet them. Once a week there is a MTL breakfast, and once a week there is a MTL lunch. People gather in cafes, get to know each other, chat informally, ask questions about the project and see how our tokenomics works in everyday calculations. And then at some point they start talking about libertarians and the Montelibero project, not as "they" but as "we".
First Club of Montelibero
It's not enough for people to simply know that they are libertarians; it's also important for them to be surrounded by like-minded individuals. This is the most compelling reason to join a community. Occasional café meetups aren’t enough for that.
The first Montelibero club is a place where libertarians feel like home. That's why, sorry, everyone can't become a resident of the club. First, a person comes as a guest, invited by one of the residents. Then they get to know them, and decide whether to accept them into the club.
Freedom of association is a cornerstone of libertarianism, and over time, some members of Montelibero have organized their own club, “Tikhiy Omut,” ("Quiet Pool") with their own rules.
MTL-City
Spending evenings at the club is great, but why shouldn't libertarians live next door to each other? In the summer of 2021, the MTL fund and several private individuals bought a hectare of land. Then they divided it among themselves according to their investments. They cleared the land, built a road, connected electricity and internet, and constructed a water tank and sewage system. And, of course, they started building houses.
At the end of May 2023, the first permanent resident moved into MTL City. By mid-2024, two residential buildings were completed: a three-story, eight-unit building on the MTL fund’s land and a glamping house, the “geosphere,” on one of the private plots. Two more apartment buildings and several private houses are under construction. Besides housing, the city also has a modular home production facility and even a full permaculture garden created by one of the activists.
The construction continues.
MTL-Fest
On September 23, 2023, MTL City hosted Montenegro's first libertarian festival, which has every chance of becoming an annual event.
The festival featured a lecture hall, a music program, a sports program, and a children's playground (we’re ancaps, and we love kids). Of course, there was also a food court, a designated area for a tent camp, a marketplace, a pre-party, and an after-party — you can’t have a festival without those.
Following the success of the MTL Fest 2023, the second festival was held in the fall of 2024.
Online activities
We haven't told you about a tenth of Montelibero. If you'd like to know more, we look forward to hearing from you on our many online platforms.
Direct online communication between members - old-timers and newcomers alike - takes place in numerous Telegram channels and chat rooms (and there's also a forum for those who appreciate unhurried, structured communication formats). On the wiki page we have collected links to those info-resources that we remembered. If your resources is missing — you know what to do.
Okay, that's really cool, how do I join you?
There are plenty of options scattered throughout the text above, for a wide variety of participation levels! Subscribe to channels, talk in chat rooms, set up a wallet, get the tokens you are most interested in, come to Montenegro, come meet people at breakfasts and lunches, come as a guest to a club, become a resident of a club, come to a festival, start a business, start an activity that will attract many other community members... All roads are open!