CHAPTER 8

Digital Nomad Nation: Rise of a Borderless Generation

How the Nomad Nation Is Already Forming

“A nation is not defined by its borders or the boundaries of its landmass. Rather, a nation is defined by its collective spirit, belief, and sense of purpose.”

— Paul Sweeney

“We are not defined by the passports we hold, but by the values we carry and the connections we create.”

— Unknown

A traditional nation is defined by geography, governance, and culture — a people bound to a place. The Digital Nomad Nation turns this notion on its head. This is a community of individuals dispersed around the globe, living and traversing across borders. They are united not by passports but by shared values: freedom, exploration, and a commitment to living and working anywhere. By living in those values, they unintentionally empower each other in that journey.

Cryptocurrency is disrupting traditional banking. The internet is disrupting the once-broken flow of information across borders. In the same way, the Digital Nomad Nation is disrupting how we think about citizenship, sovereign boundaries, and community.

Nomads have begun to sync decisions and actions in a way that is already wielding massive potential influence. These coordinated actions are quickly shaping far-off corners of the world into outposts that empower remote work and living abroad. The group’s economic and cultural impact already rivals that of traditional nation-states. This is making the community a groundbreaking natural experiment in how humans organize and thrive in the digital age.

The nomads started connecting by bringing their individual trials and problems to the nomad community. By sharing solutions, they drove the growth in numbers, strength of ties, and sophistication of the community. In the process, the nomad community transformed into a nomad nation.

As of January 2022, the Digital Nomad Nation numbered over 35 million digital nomads dispersed around the world. The collective annual economic value of the community was over $787 billion [2]. This size, significance, and criteria we will analyze later make the Digital Nomad Community the first nation born online.

The population size of the Digitial Nomad Nation was just smaller than Canada at #40 in the world and just larger than Morrocco at #41. In terms of economic value and strength, the nation had per capita buying power just less than Portugal at #38 in the world based on gross national income (GNI) per capita and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita compared to the average digital nomad’s economic buying power in 2022 [2].

Collectively, digital nomads achieved the mass and gravity not of a community, but of a country.

The community’s coordinated actions were paradigm-shifting. Unintentionally synced travel patterns, collaborative projects, and enclave development showed sophisticated coordination. With ample economic resources, aligned values and goals, global mobility, and a lightweight approach to “government,” anything appears possible for the nomad nation.

The fact that a cluster of nomads has been able to achieve so many objectives in the realm of social development, governance, and diplomacy challenges everything we think we know about statehood and citizenship. Yes, some criteria define the 195 currently accepted countries. However, these criteria haven’t been updated since far before the internet changed our world.

These outdated criteria nudge us to ask three very basic questions to understand what a nation-state could be in the digital age:

What makes a nation?

What makes a citizen?

Why is a nation necessary?

The Digital Nomad Nation breaks into new possibilities of what a digital nation-state could achieve due to its “approach.” The Digital Nomad Nation did not start in pursuit of becoming a traditional nation-state but instead started with…nothing. No model. No blueprint. No predecessor. Instead, it does only what is necessary to deliver what is needed by its citizens.

The early nations of the first nomadic humans finally settled in a place aligned with common interests and needs. They are deeply connected as a community through the glue of shared time, experiences, and culture. The Digital Nomad Nation began as modern nomads sought each other out in the place they lived most of their lives – cyberspace. They initially settled into virtual communities. As their interactions increased and travels overlapped more frequently, their connections spilled offline into the nomad hubs of the real world.

These online beginnings, but with a nation in the real world, potentially make the nomad community the first nation to be birthed online.

In this chapter, we will explore what makes a nation. We will examine how this digital nation turns the common notion on its head. Last, we will dissect how significant this revolutionary new nation is for its unofficial “citizens” around the world.

Can the Nomad Community actually be a nation?

What does it mean to belong to a nation with no borders, no centralized government, and no physical land? This notion challenges the very definition of what it means to be a “nation-state” in the digital age. Moreover, how could the nomad community and its activities possibly add up to a decentralized digital nation? And what makes a digital country?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a nation is “a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory” [7]. At present, the digital nomad community easily fulfills these criteria for a nation.

Let’s examine how the “Digital Nomad Nation” stands up to the criteria within this definition.

Common Descent of Individual Nomads

“Common descent” is normally seen as the multigenerational ethnic and national lineages we each have as individuals. However, the timeline of the digital nomad nation stretches back mere decades. It is still in its infancy compared to the 4000+ years of our oldest civilizations. But, because the Digital Nomad Nation is the product of the digital age, starting in the 1970s, we must accept that mere decades of history will suffice as the basis for this nation’s “common descent.”

The “common descent” that digital nomads within the nomad community share is the timeline of events that were the beginnings of the digital nomad movement in 2014.

Individual nomads often share overlapping individual origin stories that led each of them into the digital nomad lifestyle. These common stories are often rooted in their dissatisfactions, an urge to wander, mounting societal pressures, and lack of fulfillment in their past lives, as discussed earlier. However, the most uniting element of their stories is how they finally leaped, joining the movement of digital nomadism.

Ultimately, the shared story of “common descent” in the Digital Nomad Nation is that each nomad left everything they knew. They each traveled to discover a foreign place. Then, they joined the shared history of the global digital nomad community along the way.

Shared History of the Digital Nomad Community

Within the overlapping personal stories and the common descent nomads, the shared history of the digital nomad community arises. Arguably, the digital nomad community started with its first direct mention of the idea as a lifestyle in 1997, with the publication of the book Digital Nomad by Tsugio Makimoto and David Manners. Then, in 2007, Tim Ferris’ tactical guide for early digital nomads, The Four Hour Workweek, detailed the early logistics of the nomad life. Finally, the milestone year of 2014 delivered in-person events. This real-world interaction connected digital nomads in a way that cemented the community together. More importantly, this was the start of the snowball of growth in the digital nomadism revolution.

This clear track record of events and history formed the foundation of the Digital Nomad Nation today.

All digital nomads that have leaned into the global digital nomad community for support lean on these milestones of the past. Conferences, starting online communities, and the community evolution these facilitated underpin the network and routines in the nation today. These foundations led to projects in immigration, community coordination, joint business ventures, and more. Each of these projects strengthened the nomad community and established nomad infrastructure.

These cooperations and mechanisms made digital nomadism easier, more efficient, and more accessible. These projects boosted connectivity, leading ongoing discussions and information sharing among nomads. The shared locations, activities, and best practices became ingrained in the nomad nation’s DNA. The collective memory, collective knowledge, and community timeline are made of the events and evolutions that add up to the current Digital Nomad Nation.

Shared Culture within Digital Nomadism

Digital nomads share similar origin stories, struggles, work lives, and personal lives on the road as nomads. Additionally, this is all wrapped within an extremely uncommon life of consummate travel. All this adds up to the unique lifestyle and culture that all digital nomads share.

In practice, nomads rely on similar customs and routines in daily life, staple institutions, specific online communities, and service providers. These staples form the evolving structure that creates stability and possibility in nomads’ lives. However, internally, the foundation of the similarity between nomads is their unique values. To the nomad, values such as freedom of time, freedom of location, and freedom of experience are worth sacrificing for a normal life. These values guide each nomad in their (similar) journey.

The Digital Nomad Community is young. However, there is a unique yet clearly delineable history. There is a common lifestyle. There are neighborhoods turned nomad enclaves that serve as borrowed territories. There are common motivations that drive each nomad. All this combines into the distinct, shared culture of digital nomadism. This confirms that this bonded group of wanders isn’t just a globally distributed community; it is a nation. It is the Digital Nomad Nation.

However, the Digital Nomad Nation has more potential than just being a nation. The globe is filled with communities and collectives that are nations but not countries. If the digital nomad nation seeks to have maximum impact, and if we wish to examine the true, current impact and future potential of the nomad nation, it is worth asking a pointed, thought-provoking question.

What does it mean to be not just a nation but to be a nation-state in the digital age?

Beyond just a nation

In recent years, the nomad nation has behaved more like a decentralized country than a simple nation. This nation was born online with a structure in which there is no central decision-making entity or authority. Still, somehow, the community exercises the kind of organization that countries use to unite their people, empower their people, and interact with other nations and communities. In recent years, the nomad nation has fulfilled many of the responsibilities of a nation-state. These more complicated responsibilities include the societal dances of diplomacy, trade, and cultural exchanges between digital nomads and host countries.

The criteria for a nation-state or recognized country are more clearly defined than the simple dictionary definition of a nation. By contrast, for a nation-state, international law via the 1933 Montevideo Convention, article 1, states that: The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”

The Digital Nomad Nation has little possibility of being recognized as a nation-state according to international law and via recognition by other countries. But, the nation would benefit very little from the gargantuan efforts required to achieve such status. However, lightly examining the Digital Nomad Nation against the criteria that qualify 195 nations on the planet as countries bear some interesting and overlooked insights. A close examination reveals the effectiveness of the Digital Nomad Nation on the world stage and the potential of the future.

The last two criteria for the nation-state in international law, “government [and] capacity to enter into relations with the other states,” are very interesting lenses through which to start examining. They can help us understand how unique and impactful the digital nomad nation has been in recent years, all without being noticed.

Country Criteria 1: The Government of the Digital Nomad Nation – Decentralized representation by voting with dollars and presence

Throughout this book, the digital nomad nation is referred to as a “decentralized nation.” In this context, “decentralized” means the population of nomads is not limited to a single location. Instead, that population is distributed around the world. At the same time, the authority in the community to make and enact decisions is not centralized to any one person or group of people in the community. Instead, authority is distributed throughout the entire community.

The nomads within the nomad nation are the decentralized government. They collectively express ideas and opinions. They “vote” on major issues and take action that follows through on community resolutions. However, this process happens more fluidly and efficiently than proposing ideas, and “voting” is handled in other countries.

Digital nomads apply direct democracy in governance by “voting with dollars and presence.”

Seasoned digital nomads constantly stay connected to the community in some way. By returning to the community often, they maintain their preferred level of awareness of issues and trends that affect nomads. Through this connection, they receive emotional and informational support. Within this constant two-way contact between individual nomads and the collective digital nomad community, a natural process of policy discourse happens. Individual nomads propose ideas, raise complaints, and share insights publicly for review. Beyond the noise are countless genuine opportunities for the nomad collective to explore. A new idea could be a potential new nomad hub as over-tourism sets into previously frequented locations. A proposed possibility could be a new opportunity to gather, such as conferences or co-living projects. A possible project could border on diplomacy, such as a nomad-focused residency permit initiative or tourism board cooperation. Tackling community problems like economic leakage and the negative effects of gentrification could be a proposed initiative.

A wide breadth of ideas are constantly shared in the online and offline spaces digital nomads flock to and openly analyze.

In the early stages of this digital nomad community voting process, information gathering and sharing take place. Nomads quickly share opinions and updates in forums and communities, newsletters, and bulletins. Anything that could benefit from nomad interest, and vice versa, is shared raw and unfiltered. The information, ideas, opportunities, and concerns circulate through the corners of the internet where nomads live virtually. The ideas then encounter vicious criticism, pressure testing, and maybe validation along the way. Only the most high-opportunity ideas survive the onslaught.

Within this process of scrutiny, “insufficient ideas,” deemed unworthy of the community’s attention and effort, die on the vine. However, ideas with promise remain at the top of the community’s mind as they are at the top of social media feeds. Then, the ideas transform from mere ideas into some form of test trial. Curious nomads voluntarily put the idea into action, giving it the opportunity to thrive or fail as nomads vote in the only way that counts – by supporting the idea with their actions.

The Digital Nomad Nation “Voting” Process in Action

For instance, a single nomad could share the idea of a new potential nomad village on the tropical island of Langkawi, Malaysia. This new nomad hub could be a beautiful alternative to other beloved hubs like Bali, Sri Lanka, and Thailand amid over-tourism.

Langkawi Island shows lots of promise as a potential digital nomad enclave. The beautiful beaches, low cost of living, and easy access from Kuala Lumpur’s international airport ensure that all the boxes are in a good location. An excited and ambitious nomad could share this idea publicly – on Reddit, in Facebook groups, in messaging groups, and directly among friends. He would include details of his beautiful experiences in nature and national parks, the kind people, the amazing food, and the internet strength, capping off the “proposal” with how cheap the entire experience was. Punctuating with a vision of an island perfect for calm and focus after the enjoyable chaos of Bangkok plants, the final seed of information nomads need to be convinced to give the island a try.

Then, nomads begin to test out the location for themselves.

Visiting and “voting” begins.

One by one, in a gradual, organic process, nomads are convinced to visit of their own volition and enjoy taking mental notes along the way. After the experience, they each return with their verdict.

Each nomad will share firsthand accounts and trip reports, as well as their thoughts and details. These “trip reports” will include information about the near real-time cost of living, visa situation details, social climate, and more. The accounts may also include whether nomads genuinely back the posed idea as a viable opportunity or if it is a potential marketing ploy pushed by a government or company with a hidden agenda.

These kinds of “after-action analyses” are shared on every destination around the globe. They exist as permanent resources and references in Reddit communities, Facebook groups, messaging groups, and small nomad forums across the internet. Each “report” validates or criticizes the location and the experience with colorful opinions and thoughts of potential. Scrutiny then continues virtually from digital nomads all over the world. Suppose the proposed new digital nomad hub has a convincing enough pitch, backed by experiences on initial visits from trailblazing nomads, along with most of the information early adopters need to be convinced to visit. In that case, test visits continue among the wider community.

At this point, the wider digital nomad nation government steps in…the people. Each nomad in the 35 million gets to choose whether to support (visit) the proposed project.

As the wave of curious nomads increases, they naturally “vote” by being present in the destination longer or over repeat visits. The cash that they spend during each stay is the pivotal component in this “voting process.” The stacked effect of more nomads visiting and more cash spent has a preserving and growth effect for potential nomad hubs, keeping nomad-friendly facilities in business.

Economic Darwinism and the decentralized power structure step. Suppose enough digital nomads visit a location, support by purchasing services, share positive feedback, and return at a later date. In that case, the “project” becomes a staple within the digital nomad community. City hubs, visas, and co-working, co-living, and workcation business models around the world became nomad staples this way.

In the case of our example, that “project” is a new nomad hub alternative, potentially borrowed territory as a physical location and cultural enclave for digital nomads.

In the real world, Langkawi has been a growing success among nomads. This tropical Malaysian island remains a backpacker haven and is growing slowly from a tourism aspect. However, it appeals to a niche digital nomad crowd – as all digital nomad hubs do. Langkawi’s niche qualities are the slow pace, great weather, and peaceful atmosphere compared to other hubs. The Malaysian government has finally noticed the increase in nomad traffic and decided to support its growth as an enclave. For the past three years, the Malaysian government has sponsored and supported a Digital Nomad Conference as part of its DE Rantau program, aiming to empower and connect remote workers and digital nomads throughout Malaysia.

This cozy little tropical nomad hub started with a small idea shared in the Digital Nomad Nation.

The simple act of proposing an opportunity and then voting with dollars and presence led to an amazing, welcoming digital nomad hub on a beautiful Southeast Asian island. Additionally, it attracted government backing and global nomad community-building events. Langkawi is a recent success that shows the potential and power of this decentralized nomad nation.

The most encouraging lesson is the value of this natural process of discourse, selection, and action. The process of discovery, proposal, information sharing, and voting with dollars and presence is a powerful community tool. Add in the potential volunteer advocacy/diplomacy and continuous feedback, and with a little intention, the nomad nation becomes quite influential. Even more impactful is the fact that the Digital Nomad Nation’s decentralized decision-making process can happen with any potential project the community desires.

In the scheme of the digital nomad infrastructure complex, economic Darwinism enforces what individuals show up for and spend money on. Digital nomads have voted for the Nomad Summit in Chiang Mai and the separate Nomad Cruise repeatedly for a decade. Digital nomads have consistently voted for Chiang Mai, Lisbon, Bali, and Medellin as major nomad hubs since the early days. Digital nomads routinely vote for and against clothing brands, backpack brands, service providers, travel and work programs, restrictive visa situations, communities that treat them like walking ATMs, and more. This efficient yet effective voting process is achieved by simply showing up or not, buying it or not, and continuing to recommend it or not.

Proactive governments around the world monitor the number of digital nomads that visit their locations, assessing the economic potential of the community overall. This interest in the presence of digital nomads gives influence to the nomad community. It also gives a level of influence to the presence of each nomad. Additionally, governments track the efficacy of nomad outreach programs, such as the Argentina Digital Nomad Welcome Package, visas such as Colombia’s digital nomad visa, and tax exemptions and reductions such as Portugal delivered with its D7 visa tax exemption windows. They track these efforts to measure if, for the host government and its people, the economic juice was worth the policymaking squeeze. In this hindsight analysis, governments see if nomads are actually participating and voting for their initiatives, using applications, dollars, and presence.

The programs that are voted for stay, sustained by profits. The programs neglected by nomads die off.

Companies that deliver products and services nomads use and recommend ultimately receive the dollars from purchases. These “votes” allow the company to survive and provide another day. Those companies that aren’t voted for slide into the graveyard of digital memory.

In a representative democracy, parliament or Congress has the opportunity to propose new ideas, initiatives, and problems. In the nomad nation, any nomad can easily inject an idea into the public sphere of awareness of the global digital nomad community. With a few simple clicks, any nomad can place an idea at the top of the media feed in a virtual nomad community of millions for consideration. This equal voice and equal power for all underpins the decentralized and egalitarian nature of the nomad community.

A Note on Voting with “Dollars”

In the future, as nomads from the new BRICS proliferate, “voting with currency” will be the equality-enforcing norm among digital nomads globally.

The term “voting with dollars” may seem myopic. The phrase does highlight the currency of a country whose population only represents 4.2% of the global population. However, this is a mere expression of the current financial plight of many digital nomads, and it will evolve to be more inclusive over time.

In the early decades of digital nomadism, “earning in dollars and spending elsewhere” was a common goal for many nomads. This was the case regardless of nationality and simply due to the buying power of the US dollar and its money changers around the world. Very few places in the world do not accept US dollars. By contrast, the currencies of many smaller countries with less economic influence on the world stage, such as Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam, are routinely refused for exchange abroad. This is not just at shops or restaurants but also at airport moneychangers outside of their “home regions.”

This capitalistic discrimination happens because the situation for individual currencies of countries that are economically smaller is uncertain. In contrast, the economic value of a single dollar is clearly understood anywhere in the world.

According to the IMF, as of 2025, 58% of the world’s reserve currencies are held in US dollars [16]. At the same time, the second most held reserve currency, euros, makes up only 20% of the reserve currency holdings globally [16]. The global acceptance of the US dollar means an easy vote for a meal. It means a night’s stay at a hostel anywhere. This means that the fiat currency representing your hard work will be accepted globally.

However, as China (and the Yuan), India (and the Rupee), and the potential reserve currencies of the new BRICS economies (throughout South America, the Middle East, and Africa) gain power, there could be a significant shift. The massive populations of these countries represent nearly half the world’s population. As economic influence more closely mirrors population representation, they could receive the same “voting power via their ‘home currency’ and presence” as those voting with and spending in USD. This would help the global digital nomad community shape itself and its nomad enclaves in a way that is more representative of the true global digital nomad population.

In another 25 years, as we return to assess the history of the Digital Nomad Nation, hopefully, we will discover that nomads from the furthest corners of the globe receive a fair vote with their home country’s currency. In doing so, they can help us in shaping the nomad nation’s path more equitably.

Until then, for simplicity, we shall recognize the current ability of each nomad to “vote with dollars and presence.”.

Luckily, there are more avenues to influencing a place than spending money.

Money talks, but so do voices. The volunteer advocates for nomad nation diplomacy demonstrate this perfectly.

Country Criteria 2: Capacity to enter into relations with other states

The digital nomad nation has no figurehead and no single authority. But this doesn’t prevent it from cooperating with and influencing other nations. Both actively and passively.

Passively, each nomad lures the attention of policymakers with the average $1,875 they spend each month. This potential cash injection into small economies is enticing for potential host countries. This is especially true when multiplied by the millions of nomads to attract. This economic opportunity alone has attracted policymakers and tourism boards to target and engage the nomad community of their own volition, opening the door for discussions.

The authority structure for the nomad nation is loosely and accidentally self-governing and decentralized. The nation’s replacement for diplomacy with advocacy follows a similar approach. In the Digital Nomad Nation, ” diplomacy” self-starting volunteers frequently meet with policymakers in host countries. In these discussions, they convince governments to tap into the economic opportunities of the nomad nations by delivering what nomads need. The mutually symbiotic relationship was created, and the outcomes were no different from traditional diplomacy. However, these activities simply occur on a smaller scale, with a narrower list of target goals.

The 1 year long Greek Digital Nomad visa, the Croatian Digital Nomad Visa, and the Madeira Nomad Village are impressive examples of volunteer diplomacy outcomes. These three government and nomad cooperative initiatives took place thanks to the receptiveness of the host countries and the efforts of “volunteer diplomats” from the nomad nation. These volunteer diplomats guided the efforts and continued to push policy forward at stalled points in the policymaking process.

But, with the average nomad being less than fond of the immigration department and constantly on the move, long-term advocacy is difficult. The three projects listed took years to complete once started, not including the phases of ideation and team building. If the average nomad stays in a single country for less than 6 months, who are these stable, reliable advocates?

Luckily for the digital nomad nation, not all friends of the community are globe-trotting nomads far beyond their home countries. The “domestic nomads” mentioned earlier who travel within their own country and other nomads who have had their taste of travel and returned home often advocate for the nomad nation. Using their citizenship in the host country as an asset, as well as their insight into digital nomads and the community, they advocate for policy changes benefiting digital nomads as well as their country.

Country Criteria 3: Permanent Population

In the criteria for a state, “permanent population” means that a nation-state has an enduring and stable group of inhabitants living within its territory. This population does not need to be set in number or composed of a single ethnic or cultural group, but it must be continuous and identifiable over time. This is where the digital nomad nation starts to turn the idea of what qualifies a community as a nation-state on its head.

There are already millions of nomads who identify as digital nomads. They actively connect with other digital nomads and live out the shared culture of digital nomadism. The nuance in identifying the digital nomad nation’s permanent population and where the nomad nation exists starts to blaze new ground. It directly relates to the territory in which the permanent population exists. We have clear evidence of a population of digital nomads. So, let’s examine the idea of the “digital nomad territory.” Then, let’s question what qualifies as a territory when speaking of a digital nation.

Country Criteria 4: Territory

A traditional nation-state or country, like France or the Philippines, lays claim to specific pieces of land wherein its citizens live, work, safeguard their culture, and are governed. But, the Nomad Nation’s members live in the real world, in “borrowed territories” as they traverse the globe. As individual nomads wander their migration paths, they often return to the evolving and adapting hubs and capitals for digital nomads – of Chiang Mai, Lisbon, and Medellin. Here, they congregate, connect, and immerse themselves in a shared culture unique to the nomad nation. Similar to other cultural enclaves around the world, such as the many Chinatown and Little Italy neighborhoods, nomad enclaves are significant for connecting and sharing culture. But, these welcoming homes are not sufficient “footholds” for a nation-state.

The borrowed outposts draw the nomad community together. But they clearly are not enough to fit the international law’s traditional definition of “defined territory.”

However, the digital nomad nation is not a traditional nation. It is a digital-first nation, and the territory held and inhabited by its members is digital-first. The Digital Nomad Nation’s territory does follow the criteria for a permanent population in a defined territory. But it does so in cyberspace, with diplomatic outposts and nomad cultural enclaves branching into the real world.

Let’s look at a real-world example of an existing, recognized country. Indonesia

The archipelago of Indonesia has over 17,000 islands populated by permanent presence. This territory affirms Indonesia’s statehood and territory. Similarly, on the internet, the Digital Nomad Nation exists within the hundreds of “digital islands.” These islands are the online communities of nomads, large and small. They exist across the major social media channels and forums that were popular in the first two decades of the digital nomad revolution.

Indonesia’s more populated territories are the islands of Java, Lombok, Bali, and beyond. In contrast to those physical locations, digital nomads staked their virtual territorial claims in cyberspace’s “digital islands,” such as the Reddit r/DigitalNomad community and several Facebook groups for niches of digital nomads. Members numbered over 100,000 in each of these “digital islands” specifically designed for the people and culture of digital nomadism.

For comparison, the population of the popular Indonesian island of Bali in 2024 was approximately 4.4 million. At the same time, the digital nomad “virtual island” of the r/DigitalNomad subreddit had a modest yet significant half of this population at 2.2 million.

For the skeptic that states, “gathering in a virtual place ‘online’ doesn’t count!” as a way to refute the nation-state for a virtual age, as of April 2024, 40% of the average person’s waking time was spent online [6]. This means that nearly half of our waking lives as human beings in the digital age are already spent in corners of the internet. The internet is clearly significant enough for us to invest nearly half of our valuable waking years in it. So, surely islands of communities within the internet are sufficient places for a digital nation-state to stake its flag.

But, at less than 25 years old, the Digital Nomad Nation is an extremely young experiment. As such, the digital nomad community and how it continues to settle in cyberspace and beyond will continue to change. The nation will evolve in lockstep with the still-evolving possibilities of virtual reality, the metaverse, and trends in how socializing enmeshes with virtual experiences.

The nomads of the nation will continue to coalesce and look for ways to connect more deeply. The offline efforts of conferences, cruises, and co-working spaces will mirror these efforts online. In this constant online and offline connectivity, the nomad nation has the potential to leverage virtual reality and augmented reality to create permanent virtual spaces. These could become virtual territories for digital nomads. Whether these potential virtual territories come to fruition as virtual co-working spaces in the metaverse or as information repositories online like the “Uncensored Library” in the Minecraft map, the future holds ample opportunity for the digital nomad nation to define its virtual territory as the needs of the nomad community dictate.

The Digital Nomad Nation is already here and already evolving

This section has delivered a more academic approach to assessing the existing digital nomad community against accepted frameworks of what it means to be a nation and nation-state. Ultimately, we can see that the digital nomad nation is, in fact, a nation. The nation is also well on its way to being a decentralized nation-state as governments and other countries begin to reassess what a nation-state means in the internet age. But the beauty of the digital nomad nation and its accidental occurrence is that it has not expressed any desire to be either a nation or a state. The digital nomad nation just is.

Because the digital nomad nation is busy simply just being what nomads need. The nomad nation draws nomads together. It cultivates the nomad capitals and hub cities. It supports nomads on their journeys. The nomad nation exists now with the pure objective of empowering nomads in a minimalist, function-first approach.

Such an organic existence begs the question, how was the Digital Nomad Nation born?

Chapter 8 Field Insights: How the Nomad Nation Is Already Forming

① The Digital Nomad Nation Is Real—Even Without Borders

With over 35 million people, shared culture, migration paths, and collective power, the nomad community already behaves like a nation. It just doesn’t look like the ones we’re used to.

② It’s a Nation of Values, Not Geography

This new kind of nation isn’t bound by land or passports—but by shared values like freedom, adaptability, self-reliance, and connection. Citizenship in the Digital Nomad Nation is chosen, not assigned. Participation is active, not inherited.

③ A New Social Contract Is Emerging

Nomads are solving problems together, building systems of support, influencing local policy, and creating centers of economic gravity across continents. Without asking permission, they’ve created a functioning society—and it’s only just beginning.

Departure Point:

Ask yourself: What makes you feel like you belong somewhere?

Is it land, law, or something deeper—shared purpose, values, and relationships, perhaps?

Then, ask: What kind of nation would I want to be a citizen of? If you believe in mobility, mutual aid, personal sovereignty, and global connection… you might already be part of one.

The Digital Nomad Nation isn’t a future to be built—it’s a reality to be recognized.

Timeline of the Rise of the Digital Nomad Nation

Once you glimpse the history and rapid progression of the Digital Nomad Nation, understanding its current state and potential is much easier. The timeline of the Digital Nomad Nation reveals how individuals were naturally swept into the nation’s whirlwind story.

On an individual level, the digital nomadism movement began in the late 2000s. This was when mainstream literature introduced the idea to the public, remote work became a remote possibility, and a new digital travel infrastructure emerged.

For the digital nomad community, 2014 can be seen as the year that nomad communities began to coalesce. At this time, clear online communities began to form, and conferences began. Additionally, the offline communities of the digital nomad hubs and capitals started to form and grow.

But for the sake of the entire story, the free-spirited exploration of the 1960s made wandering for pleasure and fulfillment a popular possibility. During this period, a spark started something that still burns bright in the modern wanderer.

Timeline of the Digital Nomad Movement

1967 – The Beatles and other popular artists of the 1970s set out on “The Hippie Trail.” This road trip went from London to India. Their presence sent the overland adventure mainstream and shaped the foundation of a free-spirited era, backpacker travel, and the common “backpacker migration paths” today.
1973 – “Across Asia on the Cheap” is published as Lonely Planet’s first travel guide. This now popular guide started because of the founders’ adventures in the wake of The Beatle’s travels on the Hippie Trail.
1979 – The demise of the Hippie Trail began as war and geopolitics slammed borders shut. Markedly, the Iranian Revolution, the Soviet-Afghan War, and rising political instability in Pakistan ended the casual adventures on this path.
1997 – Makimoto and David Manners, authors of the book “Digital Nomad,” shared ideas of what the future remote working traveler type could be. They also established the now ubiquitous moniker “Digital Nomad.”
2007 – Tim Ferris published his book The 4 Hour Workweek, clearly detailing the potential of life abroad while working online.
2008 – AirBnB launched. This started the progressive innovation and expansion of the accommodation category, adding the flexibility and global availability of a homier alternative to hotels that many digital nomads rely on today.
2008 – Facebook reaches 100 million users, displaying clear changes in how humans connect and gather in the digital age.
2009 – The r/digitalnomad subreddit was founded as the first significant digital meeting point for nomads.
2010 – Instagram was founded, starting the cascade of social media engagement and visual representation of the digital nomad lifestyle. The visual representation and viral nature of social media content quickly increased awareness of digital nomads and travel lifestyles.
2010 – Bitcoin picks up traction (created in 2008), marking the mainstream start of borderless financial innovation and decentralized management of large-scale open projects.
2012 – Facebook reached one billion users, gathering 14% of the world’s population at a single point in cyberspace.
2014 – The digital nomad movement begins.
2014 – Digital nomad conferences began to be organized, including DNX (from 2014) and CUAsia (from 2015).
2014 – The “Digital Nomads Around the World” Facebook group started as one of many large online nomad hubs.
2014 – Nomadlist was founded to track, map, and rank digital nomad hub cities around the world.
2015 – Revolut and N22 were launched as banking alternatives that are friendly to frequent travel and a life abroad. Digital nomads often used these popular banking alternatives to overcome the show-stopping complexity of cross-border banking in life abroad.
2017 – Beginning of the consolidation of the Digital Nomad Nation.
2017 – The number of remote workers (including digital nomads) reached one million in 2017 [6].
2018 – r/digitalnomad subreddit reaches 100,000 subscribers.
2019 – The pandemic begins sending remote work mainstream. The lockdowns sparked new “work from home” policies, driving awareness of and participation in remote working and acceptance of remote work by traditional employers.
2019 – The pandemic and regional travel restrictions and lockdowns force nomads still on the road to move to cities “still open” and open to nomads during pandemic procedures. This forced migration caused rapid coalescing into the nomad capital cities and nomad hub cities that were still open. Notably Canggu, Bali and Tulum, Mexico.
2019 – Digital Nomads Around the World Facebook page reaches 100,000 subscribers.
2020 – Estonia offers the first digital nomad visa. This displayed the first significant interest by governments in the potential of the digital nomad population. Bermuda and Barbados’ followed closely behind with their won digital nomad visas.
2021 – r/digitalnomad subreddit reaches 1,000,000 subscribers.
2022 – r/digitalnomad subreddit reaches 2,200,000 subscribers.
2022 – The Digital Nomad population reaches over 35 million nomads globally and $787 billion in economic value each year.

The Evolution of the Nomad Nation

In the early part of this book, we explored how tech thinkers planted the idea of the digital nomad into the psyche of society at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries.

Makimoto and Manners postulated the possibility of a digital nomad in their so-named book. Later, in 2007, Tim Ferris breathed life into the idea by producing a cookbook on how to make a lifestyle of digital nomadism a possibility in The Four Hour Work Week,

Those two inspirational sparks rocketed the first digital nomads on their way to stumble into the unknown around the world, figuring out much of how to combine remote work and travel on their own.

From 1997 to the early 2010s, the early digital nomads launched themselves into their journeys individually without the support of the community.

Some nomads discovered the idea of digital nomadism from Ferris’ lifestyle expose. Some nomads discovered it as an epiphany realized in isolation during a gap year of travel. Others discovered it in brief conversations. In any case, most digital nomads were born in isolation – not guided to successful digital nomadism by a community. The idea and approach to nomadism as an individual was simple – find a way to work online to stay abroad a little longer.

Their plans were clunky – as there were no best practices for nomadism yet. The staple travel tools of today, such as accommodation booking platforms, Airbnb, and e-sims, weren’t available. The physical infrastructure overlapped with backpackers, flashpackers, and slow travelers. While this made travel easy, it made balancing work, life, and travel within an infrastructure that wasn’t designed for it difficult. This led to an experience of trial and error, the creation of a new subculture of travel, and the organic rise of infrastructure uniquely suited to it.

By the mid-2010s, the early digital nomad community began coalescing as more aspiring nomads joined, and many stayed longer.

With no intention of reinventing the wheel, digital nomads continue to follow backpackers and solo travelers in their migrations. The Banana Pancake Trail, the Maya Trail, and the Gringo Trail remained staple travel paths from 2014 to 2015. However, as nomads strategically lingered to work and recover on these paths, digital nomad capitals emerged. Most notably, Chiang Mai emerged as Asia’s capital, Lisbon as Europe’s capital, and Medellin as the Americas’ capital. These new nomad capitals were continually re-affirmed by a constant flow of visiting nomads. Each capital grew “stronger” as more infrastructure grew in each to support the growing nomad populations within.

Online communities continued to grow as awareness of the digital nomad lifestyle spread like wildfire. Digital nomadism was transitioning from being a niche possibility to an aspirational idea.

In 2017, social media and online communities poured gasoline on the flame of awareness of digital nomadism.

Popular social media platforms of the time, such as Facebook and Instagram, pushed algorithm-friendly and influencer-fluffed snippets of what people believed the digital nomad lifestyle was like into the public sphere of awareness. For many, the prospect of this dreamy lifestyle was a welcome alternative to the dissatisfactions of home. The millions of tiny recountings of the digital nomad life shared across social media made known travel possibilities and the possibility of digital nomadism. The “content” also informed digital nomads on where to go to access the collective knowledge of the growing digital nomad nation, online and offline.

As the population of active nomads continued to grow, nomad hub cities continued to emerge and expand in addition to the capitals. This increase in real-world “touchpoints” to the offline nomad community made it possible for aspiring nomads to plug into the community in any region or continent of the world. From Fukuoka to Mexico City to South Africa to Bulgaria, aspiring and active nomads were now able to find each other and connect more easily. It was finally possible to launch a nomad venture from anywhere and plug into the community in person at every phase of the journey.

Online communities on platforms such as Facebook and Reddit lured more nomads into the journey and provided essential information and support.

The online communities grew in population, number of groups, focuses, and organization, which ultimately gave nomads more opportunities to connect productively. This allowed new nomads to find accurate, up-to-date solutions for visa issues, tax issues, emotional issues, and beyond. Regardless of how far they adventured. Nomads finally had a network to lean on. While many digital nomads previously returned home due to loneliness and being overwhelmed, the growing omnipresence of the Digital Nomad Nation has now created a loop of connectivity. This connection supported nomads in staying on the road longer. These communities also allowed them to share their entire experiences (positive and negative) in a way that strengthened the knowledge base of the digital nomad community and inspired more aspiring nomads observing from home to leap into adventure.

Interaction on forums and social media threads added to a growing repository of openly available information that served as education on how to start in the digital nomad lifestyle satisfyingly and effectively for the long term. This awareness of issues, communication on how to solve them, and support between nomads alleviated many of the previously unsolved struggles within the nomad’s lives.

Fewer nomads were leaving. More would-be nomads were joining. The community was growing.

Governments and companies began responding to the growing Digital Nomad Nation.

Within the financial space, big finance responded to the growing market of frequent travelers and consumers living abroad by delivering direly needed banking alternatives. From N26, established in 2013, to Revolut, established in 2015, to Wise, formerly known as Transferwise, established in 2011, the financial sector was adapting to the wanderer demographic in innovative ways. New products were created that uniquely served the borderless living movement, currency exchange, and multi-country business operations unique to digital nomads.

Beyond new finance infrastructure created by massive organizations, smaller, more agile private sector products and services were evolving to accommodate and empower the growing community of digital nomads. The 2022 “Live and Work Anywhere” initiative started by Airbnb and local governments aimed to attract digital nomads to neighborhoods beyond the traditional nomad enclaves. Even smaller initiatives continued to help people live nomadically while working, such as Workaway, Outside, Roam, Remote Year, Wifi Tribe, and Nomad Cruise. Each of these significant projects did not just serve nomads but also empowered them and raised awareness of low-traffic locations in a way that also benefitted communities.

More and more government and private interests will recognize the economic opportunity, culture-sharing opportunity, and skill-sharing opportunity of connecting with the Digital Nomad Nation. With this, the pursuit of mutual benefit will continue to power experiments in delivering the logistics humans need to live better nomadically in the internet age.

Additionally, in the future, the digital nomad community will have increasing opportunities to cooperate with nation-states, potentially leading the way as the first digital nation born online.

How the members of the nomad community add up to the First Digital Nation

We’ve reviewed how the nomad community is functioning as more than just a simple nation – with common descent, shared history, shared culture, and cultural enclaves serving as borrowed territory among digital nomads. We have also dissected how this Digital Nomad Nation is already performing some of the functions of a nation-state by leveraging the community’s vast economic power to “vote” on and enact initiatives like a distributed government. The new notoriety of the nation has even influenced other country governments to take on immigration reforms for visas and development initiatives to attract nomads, spearheading hopeful nomad enclaves.

But there is so much more potential to what the Digital Nomad Nation can do and achieve.

We can envision a path for the Digital Nomad Nation’s continued development and service to its “citizens” by examining what functioning nation-states already do that justifies their existence, comparing how the Digital Nomad Nation already measures up as a digital country,

Why does a nomad nation need to exist? To empower its citizens

Nation-states perform many functions, such as engaging in diplomacy, guiding international trade, and defending the safety of their citizens and territories, among many other reasons. However, the primary purpose of any good country is to empower its people to live healthy, productive lives. This means ensuring that people have the resources and opportunity to thrive and grow sustainably.

This “empowerment of a people” could be achieved by uniting the people, enabling productive communication between those people, and assuring the pathways that give the opportunity for these people to live, work, and trade freely.

A country that empowers its people to live satisfying lives sustainably and ethically has fulfilled its purpose as a country.

The Digital Nomad Nation has the chance to empower digital nomads in a way that is more efficient, more innovative, and more forward-thinking than a traditional government. There is an opportunity to maximize how nomads thrive in the evolving global political landscape of the Internet age. An optimally functioning Digital Nomad Nation could even do so with less waste. Ultimately, the nation stands to achieve just more than most traditional nations with fewer resources.

The goal of the Digital Nomad Nation should not be to replicate nations as they currently are. That would bring in all the bureaucratic and political dysfunction that comes with a country and government in the present day. The optimal case for a digital nation would be to operate more efficiently, only serving the shared goals and needs of its population. Along the way, it can discard all other tasks and functions that are then, by definition, wasteful of the nation’s influence and resources. Additionally, tackling only essential needs not addressed by other means and establishing systems that help those needs to be met by reliable, efficient third parties would be an efficient, optimal way for citizens of a digital country.

As an example of how the digital nomad nation could seek the most efficient path to empowering the nomad citizenry, let us quickly look at the possibility of a Digital Nomad Nation passport and potentially better solutions to the core problem.

The Digital Nomad Visa: An underrated tool for nomads

As beloved as the passport is by all travelers, at times, passports can be the bane of the wanderer’s existence. Sometimes, passports allow us to stay just long enough in a place to be disappointed and long for more. Other times, passports eliminate the possibility of even visiting – without a cumbersome and competitive visa process.

However, while much of the community longs for a Digital Nomad Nation passport, focusing on the end goal of easy access to the countries we love presents a much more efficient option – digital nomad visas.

These digital nomad visas generally offer more desirable one to two-year extendable stays compared to the common one to three-month stays offered on tourist visas. This benefit makes the digital nomad visa option better than normal tourist visas, even for “strong passport” holders.

The media often paints digital nomadism as a “strong passport only” lifestyle, open only to citizens with passports of countries that are allowed easy access to nations across the planet. However, digital nomad visas open the lifestyle to any nationality or passport. While tourist visas are generally only available easily to strong passports, these nomad visas offer significantly longer stays. Additionally, “nomad visas” are often open to people of all nationalities. If applicants can show sufficient remote work income and a clean criminal record, they are welcome in a way weak passports rarely receive. Digital nomad visas are potentially the leveling factor in the digital nomad community.

For example, the Portugal D8 visa offers a renewable 1-year stay in Portugal and potential Portuguese citizenship in 5 years. Plus, this opportunity is available to all nationalities. By contrast, even strong non-EU passports are limited to 90 days in Portugal on a single trip with a traditional visa waiver.

The same freedom applies to the Greek Digital Nomad visa, as it is open to any nationality and allows up to a 2-year stay in Greece. In contrast, even strong passports with a digital nomad visa are limited to a 90-day stay in Greece.

A good digital nomad visa can transcend the value of a strong passport by offering longer stays to all nomads, regardless of passport. Thus, “DN visas” should be a higher priority for the Digital Nomad Nation than a dedicated “Digital Nomad Nation passport.” Additionally, advocacy for nomad visas open to all nationalities that meet the base criteria is an excellent use of the community’s resources.

The creation of these special visas was not the first sign of the Digital Nomad Nation’s relevance on the global stage. But, it was arguably the most significant indicator. For a government to enact immigration reform to entice a single demographic is a major accommodation. These visas not only required immigration policy actions but also required labor regulation and tax regulation reform, crossing three of the most cumbersome areas of government just to welcome digital nomads.

In 2020, Estonia became the first nation to make such a move, offering the Estonian Digital Nomad Visa. This visa allowed digital nomads to stay for one year and apply for an additional year after each expiration. This ample welcome is the counterpart to a normally scant limit of only 90 days for tourists to Estonia. Plus, that 90-day allowance is shared with any visits to all other countries in the Schengen zone. This means Estonia favors digital nomads over tourists, with a whopping additional 275 days for a single stay. This welcome conveys the level of interest the nomad nation has been attracting in recent years.

By 2025, 55 countries had launched clear digital nomad visas aiming to attract digital nomads, remote workers, and online business owners.

Digital Nomad Visa Countries

Digital Nomad Visa Countries	Length
1. Albania	1 year
2. Andorra	2 years
3. Antigua and Barbuda	2 years
4. Anguilla	1 year
5. Armenia	180 days
6. Argentina	1 year
7. Aruba	1 year
8. Barbados	1 year
9. Bahamas	1 year
10. Belize	6 months
11. Bermuda	1 year
12. Brazil	1 year
13. Cabo Verde	6 months
14. Canada	6 months
15. Cayman Islands	2 years
16. Colombia	2 years
17. Costa Rica	2 years
18. Croatia	1 year
19. Cyprus	3 years
20. Czech Republic	1 year
21. Curacao	6 months
22. Dominica	18 months
23. Ecuador	2 years
24. El Salvador	TBD
25. Estonia	1 year
26. Finland	1 year
27. France	1 year
28. Georgia	1 year
29. Germany	3 years
30. Greece	1 year
31. Grenada	TBD
32. Hungary	1 year
33. Iceland	6 months
34. India	TBD
35. Indonesia	1 year
36. Italy	1 year
37. Japan	6 months
38. Kazakhstan	TBD
39. Kenya	TBD
40. Latvia	1 year
41. Malta	1 year
42. Mauritius	1 year
43. Mexico	1 year, renewable to 3 years
44. Montenegro	2 years
45. Montserrat	1 year
46. New Zealand	9 months
47. Norway	2 years
48. Portugal	1 year, renewable to 5 years
49. Romania	1 year
50. Spain	1 year, renewable to 5 years
51. South Africa	90 days
52. South Korea	TBD
53. Taiwan	180 days
54. Thailand	Up to 5 years
55. Uruguay	1 year
56. UAE (Dubai, Abu Dhabi)	1 year

List of countries offering digital nomad visas to date or announced plans to offer a digital nomad visa

Building the Nomad Nation One Function at a Time

The continued advocacy for digital nomad visas that allow long stays open to all passports is an example of the potential piecemeal approach to designing the functions and beneficial operation of a digital country. Focusing on taking efficient actions that result in specific, high-value outcomes, tackled via volunteer action, follows the ethos of the Digital Nomad Nation. This tactic of “eating the elephant of nation creation one bite at a time” allows the nomad nation to empower its members in significant ways, bit by bit, over time, with minimal waste.

Piecing together the essential functions of a nation holds opportunities to take best practices from other digital organizations and projects and use those as building blocks to craft a successful digital country. Let’s explore this idea by defining what the nomad nation as a whole should achieve to serve the nomad citizenry fully. Then, we can examine the actions needed to achieve that end.

Potential Missions of the Digital Nomad Nation:

Connect digital nomads and help them benefit from like minds with similar needs and aspirations
Empower digital nomads to share information, insights, solutions, and support quickly and easily
Coordinate the efforts of digital nomads around the world to achieve targeted community goals
Fulfill unmet social welfare needs created by living abroad
Promote welfare and professional/business opportunities for digital nomads around the globe
Build on the identity and culture of digital nomadism and as “global citizens”
Engage in diplomacy with host nations and host communities to build, grow, and maintain mutually beneficial projects and access to host countries
Promote the sustainable growth and positive influence of the Digital Nomad Nation

We have defined the potential tasks, but what are the essential tasks and functions a country needs to perform to serve its populace best?

The most common and notable services a functioning nation supplies its tax-paying citizenry are:

Healthcare
Public Education
Environmental Protection
Economic management (monetary policy, tax collection, job creation programs, regulation of markets)
Social welfare services (social security, unemployment, housing assistance, child and family services)
Public administration and civil services (documentation, census data and collection, government offices)
Diplomacy and foreign affairs (international relations, embassies and consulates)
Cultural services (libraries and museums, arts and recreation, historic preservation)
Physical Territory

As nomads wander the world beyond the support of their home countries, how is the nation filling the unmet needs of these essential services?

Economic management and social welfare services

Since the creation of taxes, virtually every human on earth, outside of the dreaded tax man, has hated taxes. The idea that citizens are forced to hand over a percentage of their precious earnings to pay for a cluster of bureaucrats to control and distribute those funds “for the greater good” is one of the most loathed societal constructs to date.

There is no single “tax man” in the nomad nation. Still, digital nomads always pay a form of taxes, but likely not how you think. They do so in an “accidentally innovative” and much more efficient way.

In a traditional nation-state, the government first collects funds from its citizens. Then, it figures out how to spend tax revenue on services that support the public good. Such services include healthcare, education, infrastructure development, and so on. In the nomad nation, the middleman (tax man) is removed. Secondarily, the processes of tax collection and allocation of essential services have the middleman removed as well.

Many digital nomads living abroad are not required to pay income taxes in their home country. Additionally, as they usually do not remain in any single country for more than 180 days, if they avoid becoming tax residents of any of the new countries on their journeys, they legally avoid tax obligations in their host countries as well.

Unfortunately, this absence from their home country also means they cannot easily access the social services and essential services that their tax contributions normally afford. Additionally, with nomads not being residents of the countries that host them during their travels, they also cannot attain free social services in the countries that host them.

Unintentionally but still ingeniously, the Digital Nomad Nation naturally developed a more efficient approach to both “collecting” and “allocating” taxes. The nation guides nomads inefficiently “reallocating” saved tax revenue on reliable replacement social services.

In place of taxation and government services, nomads use the vast number of experiences with service providers to discover the best products and services for nomads. The collective of nomads informs digital nomads on how best to re-purchase healthcare, retirement benefits, and unemployment insurance with tax savings.

The “efforts” within the community have done a good job of loosely serving a consumer awareness function in the past. However, there is an opportunity to improve efficiency and effectiveness. The impressively effective and often manipulative marketing engine we are all exposed to today is the nomad’s biggest risk in acquiring high-quality essential services on their own. With clear profit opportunities available for travel insurance, health insurance, and “worst case scenario” service providers, such opportunities always attract unscrupulous actors. Even worse, the rise of affiliate marketing and review manipulation makes it difficult for a lone nomad to discern between safe and risky providers. The collective knowledge and memory of the nomad nation could be the solution to the nomad’s problem of finding trustworthy, nomad-centric products and services. Steps could be taken in the future to formalize this recommendation process into an objective, influence-free consumer information repository solely prioritizing the nomad’s (consumer’s) welfare in recommendations.

The Digital Nomad Nation then naturally continues to “outsource” recommended social services to the best private sector providers. These providers are all declared “the best” by individual nomads who have voted (on products and services) with dollars and patronage and followed up with feedback and reviews.

With this, a perfect balance is achieved. Nomads are free of their home country’s taxes and are no longer a burden on their home country’s social services. They use the tax savings to purchase replacement health, dental, education, and social services. This allows for the purest form of government spending of any nation on the planet and for nomads to spend their taxes on the things they value. No more and no less.

Healthcare empowered by community reviews and tax savings

Within the Digital Nomad Nation, digital nomads handle healthcare on an individual basis. Services are purchased with the tax savings that come with well-planned digital nomadism, as discussed earlier. The purchase is informed by reliable consumer reports from the digital nomad community on healthcare options suitable for nomads.

In addition to nomad and expat-specific healthcare insurance, the products and services of medical tourism offer high-quality healthcare options. Whether for routine health examinations (e.g., checkups, health screenings), surgeries, or dental care – most notably delivered by Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam, and Costa Rica – medical tourism is an often used resource among the nomad nation for “outsourced healthcare.”

Effectively, the Digital Nomad Nation outsources healthcare to the highest quality providers in the world and guides nomads to those providers distributed around the globe. This approach empowers nomads to leverage geoarbitrage for medical services and spend their tax savings accordingly on better healthcare than many would be able to achieve in their home countries with comparable tax contributions or private medical insurance.

Public Education

With 53% of nomads being self-taught in their current profession, education is an important part of the nomad’s journey. The opportunity for the Digital Nomad Nation is not to encourage traditional higher education but to use collective knowledge of where to find alternative quality education. This way, the community conserves resources by directing nomads to where specific, effective, efficient education opportunities are available cheaply or free, helping each other self-train as efficiently as possible. An open-source effort to produce such directories of education and training could augment and ease navigating the glut of information available on the internet.

This potential guide to educating/re-educating could also list international education exchanges at formal universities, knowledge repositories for training online, or even virtual training and virtual libraries in virtual reality and the metaverse, suitable for self-education.

Many more structured opportunities could potentially follow, including global skill share programs and informal universities in which nomads teach nomads.

The opportunity for the nomad nation to use its collective experience in learning, self-teaching, and retraining is vast and potent.

Environmental Protection

The digital nomad community risks enabling gentrification and its negative side effects, as well as aiding the exploitation of both nature and local populations. While the Digital Nomad Nation has no policing arm, an option exists to approach conservation, pollution control, and sustainability initiatives by helping nomads avoid the risks altogether. Through observation, research, education, sharing knowledge within the community, and sharing knowledge with the world, nomads can help avoid the potential negative impacts of their presence.

Initiative research projects into the negative effects of gentrification in nomad enclaves could be used to develop best practices for sustainable and ethical travel. Such insights would be valuable not only for individual digital nomads but also for partners operating co-working spaces, co-living spaces, and nomad-focused infrastructure to avoid negative environmental and local community impacts. Efforts to share such scientifically researched best practices and shine a light on current points of ignorance could empower environmental protection by the Digital Nomad Nation in a still decentralized way.

Digital nomads on the road and business operators are in a unique position to not only collect data from nomads passing by or observing the goings-on in their local area but also share insights and best practices with nomads as they pass through. This creates a valuable two-way channel for both learning and sharing valuable insights.

It would be difficult for a single nomad, single café, or single co-working space to collect sufficient data for a viable study. However, several nomads, business owners, and other volunteers could act together to collect data, contribute data, analyze data, and share insights in various formats, adding up to a mountain of useful data and even more useful insights. This approach would lead to a very high-value study. Even more valuable, the dissemination of such a study would make a significant impact on the health of the nomad nation and the communities that routinely host nomads.

For concerned nomads, volunteering to take on an issue and a study could be a strong first step to protecting the nature, environments, locales, and communities we wander in – as a representative of the Digital Nomad Nation.

Public administration and civil services (documentation, census data and collection, government offices)

Within formal governments, record-keeping and data collection serve the boring yet important needs of nation-planning initiatives. For the Digital Nomad Nation, such population data and records serve to inform partner governments in preparation for cooperative projects and enclave development projects. Additionally, such data informs companies about the economic potential of their planned cooperation. Community-led research projects, such as the 2022 Global Digital Nomad Study, naturally fill in the information gap for nomads, governments, and companies and could continue to do so in the future.

However, there is a strong opportunity for an additional record-keeping task to be performed by the nomad nation: personal history verification.

A formidable yet useful goal for the digital nomad nation to tackle would be the creation of a secure, trusted record of pertinent personal information on participating digital nomads. This would support applications for visas, residencies, banking, employment, and more.

While the life of a nomad is extraordinary, moving countries with the whims of the moment and the wind in one’s sails, this frequent movement creates significant difficulty for identity and personal history verification. Any digital nomad who has applied for a bank account outside of their home country or who has applied for a visa while country hopping knows how difficult the process is in getting identity and residency verification documentation. Paperwork, which often requires a string of addresses, proof of residence, and official certification (apostilling), becomes quite cumbersome when on the road.

The Digital Nomad Nation could create a trusted system that stores and verifies personal identification information. Such information could include travel and residence address history, apostilled criminal record reports, and any other information commonly requested in the visa and banking process. This trusted data repository could improve mobility for nomads by enabling easy and quick application for visas and bank accounts – while headaches would all but disappear.

This blue-sky project of an identity verification database that governments trust seems like a pipe dream. But with the possibilities of Blockchain, outsourcing major problems, and tackling this possibility one country and one identity facet at a time (driver’s license verification, income verification, residence history verification), this project is a strong possibility within the next 25 years. With the right nomads and a little motivation, anything is possible.

Diplomacy and foreign affairs (international relations, embassies and consulates)

As discussed earlier, volunteer advocacy and informal diplomacy taken on by digital nomads approaching receptive governments has been a tested and proven approach. The still decentralized community has taken this approach to achieve many goals with host nations. Notably, the Greek Digital Nomad Visa and the Croatia Digital Nomad Visa projects were initiated and advocated for by Greek and Croatian nationals, who also identified as nomads, throughout each process of establishment. The result for both was the successful and popular digital nomad visas available today. Such volunteer advocacy and informal diplomacy stand as tools for new digital nomad visas and the refinement of existing digital nomad visas. In the future, there is an opportunity to advocate for formal skill-sharing programs between digital nomads and locals, potential special economic zones overlapping with digital nomad enclaves (hubs and capitals), and more.

Volunteer diplomacy and advocacy by domestic nomads are excellent ways to continue effectively guiding how the economic potential of the Digital Nomad Nation better benefits host nations and nomads mutually.

Cultural services (libraries and museums, arts and recreation, historic preservation)

The average digital nomad is proud of their lifestyle and willing to share. At the same time, many aspiring digital nomads sit curiously at home, and local partners and governments are equally curious about the nomad nation. As such, there is a massive opportunity for nomads to record and centrally store their perspectives, stories of their experiences, arts, and representation of lives and culture within digital nomadism. There are countless informal accounts of digital nomad culture available on social media and YouTube. However, there is still a valuable opportunity for digital nomads to store online art, literature, and video to educate and preserve perspectives of and from global digital nomadism for review now and later.

Further exploring the idea of a digital country and how the digital nomad nation is fulfilling the role now

The community that makes up the Digital Nomad Nation naturally started to fulfill the essential functions of a government. In the same spirit, it continues to evolve while fulfilling the functions of connecting its citizens and serving their needs.

Specifically, the nomad nation continues to redefine how it promotes community, representation & voting, and espousing the shared values of digital nomads.

Community: Connection countering loneliness, serving the universal need for connection with a common “tribe

Twenty-five years deep into the revolution, the digital nomad nation is still underpinned by its clusters of nomads and small communities, both online and offline. While the Digital Nomad Nation will exist indefinitely, how well it succeeds in achieving shared goals (e.g., nomad visas, nomad villages, and equal representation of all nomads) will depend on how well members of the community stay connected. The evolution of online and offline communities will be pivotal in maintaining and growing the strength of the nation.

Online Communities: Where nomads started, where nomads stay connected

The many nomad communities on major platforms and in small corners of the internet are where the first digital nomads of this age first connected and how they stayed connected in lonesome, remote corners of the world. While the social platform of the moment of choice will inevitably change, the ability to connect online – exchanging destination news, sharing best practices, and offering emotional support in the loneliness of solo travel – will continue to be essential to the community. As the Digital Nomad Nation and the members within become more aware of its potential, the best-case scenario will be continuing to build online spaces for digital nomads to connect that are free from third parties influenced by profit and the algorithms that more commonly enforce their agendas.

Additionally, the community would benefit from opportunities for constant contact with other nomads – such as social media groups and virtual enclaves for nomads – and large-scale burst contacts – such as online conferences and virtual town halls that loop in aspiring nomads and nomads in remote locations. These events could reinforce shared values, offer support, and share best practices on the best path forward for the community.

Physical Territory & Offline Community: Where strong ties and major projects will begin

The Digital Nomad Nation is the first digital nation and will continue to be so, but the community needs to foster more connections between digital nomads in the real world.

This digital nation will likely never own physical territory, but gathering in the real world will always be important to the cohesion and growth of the nomad community.

Online communities will continue to be where aspiring digital nomads start their journey – via awareness first, then research and vicarious experience. Next, nomads will visit one of the enclaves, a digital nomad capital or hub perhaps, and this will be where strong relationships develop. These relationships, built in the real world, will underpin the major moves of individual nomads on their journey. They will not only create friendships with like minds that combat loneliness and maintain emotional health throughout the nomad journey but will also become the inspiring small clusters of nomads that take on projects for and within the digital nomad community.

These forged clusters of tight-knit nomads might reach out to governments for new nomad visas. They might start the conference that sparks the fire of a new digital nomad hub in an emerging region. Or, they may follow their shared passions to stay longer in a new nomad hub and advise a local business owner on leaping into a co-living space sustainably. All of these nomad community-enhancing projects become possible with strong relationships. The trust, connection, and commitment required to make such projects happen are much easier than in-person relations. These types of interactions come naturally in a healthy, active, offline community, made possible by the “borrowed” physical territories nomads gravitate to and thrive in around the world.

A major takeaway for digital nomads as members of the nation is to be open to new opportunities to connect with other digital nomads in a way that espouses the shared values of nomads globally – freedom, flexibility, collaboration, and cultural exchange. As a part of this, take time to visit and appreciate the physical territories that welcome nomads as guests, the nomad hub cities around the world.

Espousing the Shared Values of Digital Nomads: Freedom, flexibility, collaboration, and cultural exchange

All of these functions – cultivating community and connection, mediating healthcare, and cultivating nomad enclaves serve the ultimate goal of enabling a lifestyle that espouses the shared values of digital nomads – freedom, flexibility, collaboration, and cultural exchange.

Everything the digital nomad nation has taken on, in the form of open source, cooperative projects, not only espouses these values but aims to empower digital nomads to live out a life emboldened and underpinned by these values.

The Bottom Line: Staying the course is the best possibility for the nomad nation and its partners

Here are a few quick takeaways that detail how all involved can better benefit from and empower each other within the existence of the nomad nation

For digital nomads on the road: Continue to connect and create new opportunities for nomads to connect

Digital nomads are the backbone and the core of power within this nation. The more that digital nomads connect, the more possibilities and power grow within the nomad nation.

Digital nomads around the world should follow the pull and take opportunities to meet and connect with other nomads. Frequently share ideas at meetups, conferences, happy hours, and more simply, lay social soil for the next digital miracle to sprout. If no event exists near you, be the first wave and make the real-world connection happen. As a member with a vote, via presence, that matters as much as any other, individual nomads stand to create a world of difference by making the first move.

For aspiring digital nomads

The most powerful thing a seasoned nomad on the road can do is seek out the community. Similarly, aspiring nomads at home can leverage the “digital” strengths of this community and join online. Dig into the lifestyle vicariously, and ask the silly question that may be the first step of the eventual journey. Every nomad starts somewhere, and the keyboard may be the perfect place for the aspiring nomad to start.

For policymakers, governments, and host countries

While the multi-billion-dollar economic opportunity seems enticing, be aware that if not approached prudently, targeting nomads with half-baked visas and tourism programs could be a short-term romance with sour endings for all sides. Policymakers should be willing to do proper research to understand the subsets of the digital nomad demographic. If they do, they will likely find a cluster of nomads that genuinely seek the opportunity they wish to offer in a visa, residency, enclave project, or associated benefits.

Understand that digital nomads come with varying needs. These different needs are largely related to how long they have been traveling, how long they would prefer to stay in a host country, and how detached they are from their home country. Some nomads wish to stay in a host country for two months, while others want two years. Some nomads live abroad for six quick months before returning home, while others hope for a new passport, and some merely want additional permission to volunteer work legally. Whatever variation of a digital nomad visa immigration policymakers are offering, there is a demographic of digital nomads that will apply and accept happily if the application process and legislation are shaped well and publicized well. To better understand this, governments and policymakers should connect with representatives in the Digital Nomad Nation. Luckily, there are at least 35 million digital nomad representatives eager to help policymakers shape their next digital nomad visa.

Policymakers should be open to engaging with nomads and nomad advocates to craft long-term solutions for visas, residencies, tourism programs, and nomad villages that will be as beneficial to their government and communities as to nomads.

However, the most valuable nudge is pointed at nomad-friendly business owners within nomad enclave neighborhoods, who are eager to find a mutually beneficial way to connect in the nomad nation.

Business owners in nomad enclaves, co-working spaces, co-living spaces, and café owners should consider becoming nomad consulates.

While the “borrowed territory” of digital nomad capitals, digital nomad hubs, and neighborhood nomad enclaves are powerful, they are riskily temporary. For digital nomads and friends of nomads who have been bold enough to set up an establishment that is friendly to nomads, consider bringing your establishment into the nomad nation as something akin to combining a community space and consulate. As a publicized digital nomad community space, you may share the word that your café or co-working space welcomes digital nomads during specific hours and aims to foster connection through community events, dinners, and nomad community hackathons after hours. Perhaps this means already doing what you do; however, joining the ongoing conversation in the digital nomad community to share that your place is a welcoming home to digital nomads may be the fuel for the fire of your business and connection within the nomad community.

An unpredictably bright future lies ahead if the nation (and the individuals) stays true to their shared values

With the Digital Nomad Nation only in its infancy, it is clearly maturing quickly as it already fits the definition of a nation and many of the criteria of a nation-state.

Herein lies the paradigm-shifting potential of the Digital Nomad Nation—innovatively, effortlessly, and impactfully envisioning a completely new design of how nations exist.

As the Digital Nomad Nation continues to mature and actively evolve, opportunities will grow as it selectively lives up to its potential. The community will cultivate visas for all nomads to access primary enclaves regardless of their passports. It will cultivate cooperative initiatives with governments to develop formally recognized enclaves and skill-share programs. It will plot its evolution and a new path forward. The nomad nation will “shock and awe” with what a “group of wanderers” are capable of while only leaving positive outcomes in their wake.

However, it is important for the individual nomad that has joined this community’s journey to remember:

The community’s continued evolution and transformation from a community to a globally influential digital nation-state will be driven by the individual nomad. Connection, communication, volunteerism, and initiative projects sparked by each individual are the lifeblood of the Digital Nomad Nation’s continued innovation and evolution.

In order to empower the Digital Nomad Nation to continue growing, evolving, and empowering each nomad, every nomad must take the initiative to act. Share, contribute, propose, and do whatever paves the path for the nomad nation to become whatever you want it to become.

There are amazing possibilities ahead and a place in the community bold enough to join in the journey.

But for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

For every claimed success that the Digital Nomad Nation achieves, there are countless side effects to the process.

As the Digital Nomad Nation transforms so that it more effectively uses its influence to shape the world for digital nomads positively, the next trial for this global entity will be to understand whether the valued autonomy and leveraging potential financial hardship for location independence is actually doing more harm than good.

Ultimately, in the nation’s process of transformation, its “citizens” must ask:

Does the Digital Nomad Nation only serve those who comprise it?

Or does the first digital country, spanning the globe, have a responsibility to preserve and protect the places that welcome it?

And what is the potential dark side of digital nomadism?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carlos Grider launched A Brother Abroad in 2017 after a “one-year abroad” experiment turned into a long-term life strategy. After 65+ countries and a decade abroad, he now writes about FIRE, personal finance, geo-arbitrage, and the real-world logistics of living abroad—visas, costs, and tradeoffs—so readers can make smarter global moves with fewer surprises. Carlos is a former Big 4 management consultant and DoD cultural advisor with an MBA (UT Austin) and Boston University’s Certificate in Financial Planning. He’s the author of Digital Nomad Nation: Rise of the Borderless Generation and is currently writing The Sovereign Expat.

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