The negative swing; I wonder is that due to the time frame, or the "public and official" aspect?

@Necrum Having not bet on the market, I would say that the twofold issue is that 1) Countries are strongly incentivized not to recognize such a thing, since it could invite challenges to their own sovereignty (see the reaction of EU countries to the idea of Catalonian independence), and 2) Companies are mostly incentivized not to, since running a country would involve massive risk and opex, and ~95% of the benefits of doing so could be had by lobbying. In the case of something like space/ocean floor/Antarctic colonies (setting aside the 2030 time frame), I could see companies wanting to run a town (as they might want to today) since that has huge site-level benefits for their operations, but it's also much simpler than running a country, and doesn't involve stuff like managing international affairs.

@sblaplace you make some interesting points, however in Australia (and I assume other countries) there are many towns that are essentially owned by a company (Mt Isa for example. ) Hence, I hedged the bets, it will (has) happened, the openness is where the issue lies.

@Necrum is the AI summary of this comment correct? It seems to contradict the title