Hi. 👋🏽 I am Natalia, the human behind this site.

Geoarbitrage was born from the idea of attracting like-minded thinkers and exploring tools for becoming a sovereign individual.

The Start of Geoarbitrage

I first heard about the concept of geoarbitrage from The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris when I started my experiment with the digital nomad lifestyle in 2018. Although I expected a life of travel to be more expensive than my life back home, I surprisingly reduced my living costs by moving to Vietnam, which was a much cheaper country but had a better quality of life.

But I learned that I needed to deal with many problems during this exploration, including visa restrictions, accepting payments from international clients, proof of address, you name it; Society’s outdated systems don't like it when you don't have a permanent home.

However, my natural curiosity led me through lots of trial and error—from collecting bank accounts, figuring out the best way to set up online businesses, and testing out the least-talked-about ways to get residencies and passports.

I learned that diversifying your life in different countries can bypass many of the restrictions that governments put on your life and minimize nation-states' interference with your freedom. And this newly discovered cheat code was being shared by some of the greatest minds in history. In fact, it had a name: flag theory. Traveling down this rabbit hole helped me tremendously by showing me how much I had left to both learn and unlearn.

Life is about Solving Problems

I believe that life is about solving problems, and geoarbitrage is a fun way to solve them.

After five years of exploring, I have come to believe that geoarbitrage is about more than just living in cheaper countries—it is a way of living and creative problem-solving.

As a real-life example, I myself ventured my way out of my home country of China. Today, I am:

  • Earning my money in US dollars but spending it mostly in Turkish lira, which gives me a great amount of currency leverage and makes my money worth more.
  • Building an online business that legally pays zero tax.
  • Using more than 10 bank accounts in different countries, each with its own advantages (though I generally prefer Bitcoin now).
  • Running Bitcoin and Lightning nodes on my own to minimize my dependence on third parties while keeping the network more decentralized.
  • Collecting residency and passport when I see fit, so I can be more flexible in an increasingly restrictive world.

There were a lot of questions I had as I got started on this path, and they are what motivated me to start traveling and exploring options. I was curious and asked myself:

  • Where are the most cost-efficient places to register companies?
  • Where is the safest place to put my money?
  • How does the tax system work in different countries?
  • Where are the easier places to get residency or passports?
  • Where is the most feasible place to get braces and annual dental checkups for nomads?
  • What is dating like in other cultures?

..

You too might have these questions in mind as you stumble across this website. The possibilities are limitless once you realize that countries are just imaginary borders and don’t have the power to limit your freedom.

The world could be your playground instead of caging you inside a random place where you happened to be born. And I do not particularly feel I belong in any single place, as I see the world as my home; maybe you feel the same.

Walk the Talk

I enjoy learning how things structure differently in different parts of the world so that I can be creative and make them work in my favor—arbitraging these differences to maximize my freedom.

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”—Picasso

With Covid, war, censorship, corruption, inflation, and increased media manipulations these days, I would like to share my experience and findings to help more people become sovereign in this unfree world, just as I have done and am continuing to do for myself.

And why am I sharing them?

  1. It’s my way to give back to the internet, as I learned a lot from it to get where I am.
  2. I would love to meet other free thinkers and real-life hackers so that we can help each other.
  3. Sharing is the best way to learn. By teaching others, I get better at geoarbitrage.

Full Disclosure

This site does not offer financial, legal, or tax advice. It is only for educational purposes.

Geoarbitrage is where I will share what I tried and what has worked for me. I don't want to talk about things that I do not have any experience with and I will only talk about things I genuinely like.

I still have lots of things to explore and learn, and I'm not going to pretend I know EVERYTHING, which is impossible. However, I am happy to share my first-hand experience along the way. I believe nothing beats first-hand experience, especially in a society full of talkers with few doers.

Are you ready to wake up from the matrix?

via GIPHY

Natalia