There’s a Second Made-Up Country in Eastern Europe and It Runs on Dogecoin

Liberland, the self-proclaimed libertarian micronation located on a patch of disputed land on the Serbian-Croatian border, has a new neighbor: the Kingdom of Enclava. That’s right, there are now two made-up countries in the middle of Eastern Europe. Oh, and Enclava’s official currency is Dogecoin, naturally.

Enclava is the brainchild of Polish tourist Kamil Wrona who, during a visit to Slovenia, learned from locals about some of the patches of disputed no-man’s land that dot the border as a result of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in 1991.

Co-founder Piotr Wawrzynkiewicz told the AFP that Enclava was born out of a dream “to create a place where everyone, regardless of skin colour, religion, or nationality, will be able to express their opinions, study for free, and earn money without worrying about taxes.”

He also said the nation has had thousands of requests for citizenship, despite the fact that they cannot grant any kind of travel documents or even allow citizens to reside in the nation’s borders (unless Enclava gets international recognition). It has a flag, a motto, and earlier this month online elections to name its members of government, including a prime minister, a minister of finance, and a minister of science and charity.

But it’s unclear just how serious the founders are about this new lil nation. Originally, Wrona and his pals laid claim to a parcel of land just outside the Slovenian village of Brezovica, about 30 miles west of Zagreb. But last week, the Slovenian Foreign Ministry made clear that area is in fact within Slovenia, so the people of Enclava decided to plant their flag along the eastern border of Croatia, on a one-kilometer-square chunk of terrae nullius just north of Liberland.

“Because we respect the independence of other countries, their boundaries and international law, we cease all activities related to the establishment of the new state,” Wrona (who now goes by King Enclav I) wrote on the micronation’s blog. “To ensure the continued development of the Kingdom of Enclava, we have claimed the second of the largest unclaimed land portions along the Danube river near the Free Republic of Liberland.”

By choosing the meme-based altcoin Dogecoin as the nation’s official currency, Enclava has garnered a lot of interest and support from the tight-knit Dogecoin community, but also raised some eyebrows. Though it’s grown to become a popular altcoin and the community has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity, Dogecoin was originally started as a joke to poke fun at the seemingly endless number of new alternative digital currencies cropping up every week.

Slovenia’s foreign ministry, speaking to the AFP about the first Enclava location, said the micronation was only a virtual idea. Even a representative of the Liberland Settlement Association (a nonprofit working with the Liberland government to create its permanent settlement) was skeptical about the new neighboring nation.

“Anybody can claim anything on the internet, and make a fancy website to go along with it,” Michael Glaser of the LSA told me over email. “You or I could claim the planet Jupiter for ourselves, but that doesn’t hold a lot of weight under international law.”

He also noted that a quick Google search suggests the area Enclava has claimed is already home to a handful of people, unlike Liberland, which is abandoned save for an old, empty hunting cabin.

“Personally I wonder if any of their people have even attempted to reach the land at this point,” Glaser said.

By contrast, Glaser told me Liberland is “dead serious” about working to make its little 7 km square piece of land a real nation. Its president—who was arrested earlier this month after trying to enter the disputed area—has rented a home nearby in Serbia, Glaser said, and they’ve enlisted an attorney in Croatia to try to help secure access to the land.

But these efforts are still no guarantee that Liberland will ever be anything more than a libertarian Valhalla. If Enclava’s founders have yet to even set foot in their self-proclaimed nation (I reached out to members of the government but did not hear back before publication), their chances of becoming an internationally-recognized state are even slimmer.