Sovereignty for Sale w/ Atossa Abrahamian
I spoke to Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, an independent journalist and author of The Hidden Globe, about the world of offshore finance, special economic zones, and network states. We dig into her reporting on a proposed crypto enclave in St. Kitts and Nevis, the history and reality of these zones, and what happens when libertarian ideas about sovereignty and markets collide with real communities pushing back. The network state adjacent project is called Destiny and is being proposed by Olivier Ja...
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Transcript
These in twenty seventeen ish were just, like, all out saying we want to purchase sovereignty from a country. We're gonna do it from a country that's indebted. But, yeah, this, like, vision of Dubai, like, rising up from the desert from nothing, this narrative, which is bullshit because there was kind of a lot going on there before the skyscrapers. This idea that you can create this, like, world financial center from nothing using just laws and ideas and foreign workers is so appealing, and I understand why it's appealing. There's no such thing as deregulation because, like, actually, you're just replacing some rules with other rules. And this is what these guys wanna do. They don't wanna live in a lawless society. They love rules. They just want the rules to be their rules to benefit them. There are aspects of it that I think are funny. Like, it's basically a longevity cult. The way that he tries to rectify this is through some, you know, seasteading and prospera and, like, these essentially of what amounts to lifestyle experiments with politics. That's okay. But don't impose this on the people who need this.
This episode is sponsored by Nim, the world's most private VPN that protects your Internet traffic and metadata. Unlike traditional VPNs, NIM uses a decentralized mix net to scramble your Internet data, hiding who you're talking to, when, and how often. You can switch between full mix net mode for maximum anonymity or a faster VPN mode for everyday use. Pay in crypto or fiat, and even your payment stays anonymous thanks to z k powered anonymous credentials. Take back control of your online life at nim.com. Sign up today using the code blockchain socialist and get an extra month for free. Hi, everybody. My name is Joshua Rabia. You're listening to the Blockchain Socialists podcast. And today, I have Atossa Araxia Abrahamian. She is an independent journalist who writes about the cracks in the nation state system, a former editor at The Nation and Al Jazeera America. Abrahamian's reporting and criticism have appeared in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, the London Review of Books, The Intercept, and many other applications. And she is also the author of The Hidden Globe, How Wealth Hacks the World, which came out, I believe, a little over a year ago. And she recently wrote a piece that I found really interesting called Dubai of The Caribbean with Crypto, Locals Aren't Buying It, which was published in The New York Times that is about a specific project that a man named Olivia Janssen has been has been pursuing in Saint Kitts And Nevis, which is a really, really interesting read. Basically, it got me back on my network state shit, and now I am it fired me up again to begin the criticisms of of all this type of stuff and look a bit deeper into what are the kind of different attempts that these these guys are kind of doing. But before we get into that piece, maybe I think it would be really good, Atasa, if you want to maybe tell us a bit of, like, what got you into this story and because your your background is really interesting because what what I read is you have quite a few passports. You have an experience, like, very international. Four, which is, like, very it's very rare for me to find someone who has more passports than I do, more citizenships than I do. I have three. So, yeah, so I'm super interested if you want to lay the, like, the groundwork, and then we can get into the specifics of the test. Totally. So I you know, the reason I have all these passports is I'm a a UN kid of Iranians.
And so if you're from certain parts of the world, like, you you kind of collect, you you know, you collect them like Pokemon. Like, you can never have enough passports. And I think what we're seeing in The Middle East now, not to mention what we saw with COVID, etcetera, really bears that out, and it's probably a smart life decision, if not one that's available to most people. So I grew up in Geneva, which seems like a very, very boring place, but it's actually very fascinating place because it contains kind of every aspect of of the the global of the international world on the finance side, on the trading side, on the institutional side of the UN. So that's where I come from. Like, that's my country. And, you know, growing up in this environment, I we got a really big dose of, you know, crunchy, idealistic internationalism without really very much awareness of the forces that really rule the world, which are, like, financial ones and commercial ones. And I guess I started trying to reconcile these two things. Like, how come the UN is, like, just steps away from, like, UBS? How come all of these shipping companies are registered in Switzerland? There's no sea. It's a landlocked. Like, what what is going on with all of these funny mailboxes in the old town? And that's kinda where this concept of the hidden globe came from where, you know, a lot of the world we live in is deterritorialized. A lot of it is offshored in some way, and I mean, offshore in the broadest way possible. You know? Offshore is, yes, it's like a bank account in the Cayman Islands. It's also an immigrant detention center in Nauru or El Salvador, as we recently saw. It's the Panama Canal. Like, offshore is a really broad category of things that are sort of ripe for exploitation. And the reason I got to Nevis well, I got to Nevis in in a couple of different ways. My first book is all about passports. It's about the market for citizenship. Basically, lots of countries sell their passports, lots of people buy them, and this has effects on non billionaires. And we can get into that later. But one of the countries that really pioneered this practice in the early two thousands was Saint Kitts And Nevis. It did so with the help of a Swiss entrepreneur. There are, again, connections to Switzerland. But, basically, I went I spent some time in Saint Kitts And Nevis about a decade ago. Kinda love the place, especially Nevis. Got to know some people there. And then last year, actually, I suppose a friend of the pod, Quinn Slobodian, passed along a message from someone on Nevis saying, hey. This guy is trying to start a resort, a gated community. It's called Destiny. He's like a crypto guy. What's going on? And so Quinn passed this on. Thank you, Quinn. And I immediately recognized what this person was trying to do. So the person is Olivier Yansens. He is a wealthy early Bitcoin and Ethereum adopter, so he made a bunch of money, and then I I guess he sold a lot of it from what he has posted. And now his big project is to create a kind of special economic zone on steroids on the Island Of Nevis. And it's somewhere I mean, he the inspiration for this thing if you look at the the the sort of architectural plans, it looks like a resort. You know? It's, like, kind of futuristic, like, kind of what everything's sort of round, and there's terraces and infinity pools and all the stuff that you would expect on a Caribbean island. But the more I looked into, you know, what he really wanted, the more it it became clear that, like, this guy was angling for maximum autonomy. He wanted a place where he could make his own rules with his buddies. Not I'm not saying there's anything necessarily nefarious going on, but he wanted sovereignty. And in and I and I learned that iteration of this was much more open about the search for for sovereignty. He was in business with a fellow named Roger Ver, who I knew could he'd also bought a passport. And these in twenty seventeen ish were were just, like, all out saying we want to purchase sovereignty from a country. We're gonna do it from a country that's indebted. We're We're gonna help them pay their debts, and they're gonna give us what we want. And it's gonna be the first libertarian country. And so all of these, like, really obvious ideological tropes that you kind of encounter in the the network state world or that sort of tech libertarian world. They were just like, yeah. We're gonna do it. This is what we want. So that was in 2017. Since then, Roger is out of the picture. He had some troubles with the IRS that he's not resolved, and Janssen's just kept at it with some of the same people. Right? Same consultants if you look at archives of their website. Same guys coming up over and over again, but kind of finessed it into something more palatable that he could pitch to the Norwegian people. Now, unfortunately, the Norwegian people caught wind of this in a way that was, like, not totally transparent at first. What happened was that Janssen set up a company, and he hired people, and then he needed land. Right? He needed to buy land to have his enclave. And to do that, he hired a real estate agent, Sharon Brantley, who's the wife of the leader of Nevis, the premier. They have a kind of an interesting governance system where Nevis writes a lot of its own rules already. And so he got Sharon Brantley on board to go sort of door to door in this area and say, hey. Like, are you interest to to to landowners, are you interested in selling? We can offer this. Can we sign an agreement whereby in a couple of years, you'll sell the land? And some people went for it and a lot of people didn't. You know? They were pretty skeptical, like, what are these guys doing? And there was very little information about who it was, what it was, where these people came from. One person I talked to said all that we knew is that he was Belgian and wanted a space for friends and family. So this gone. And then last summer, a piece of legislation makes its way through the Saint Kitts And Nevis the saint on Saint Kitts, the national parliament that allows for the establishment of special economic zones with certain provisions attached. The people that were for it were then they they called it a special sustainability zone act. So it was really kinda greenwashed in this way. Mhmm. Mhmm. And the people that were for it were saying, well, this is gonna create more protections. If they're gonna build, it has to be in an environmentally friendly way. And the people that are against, like, what the heck? This is gonna create, like, a state within a state. That passed the parliament, critics say, very quickly, and then Janssen's and his and his pals started to really, you know, pitch this more openly to the Neevegian people and what that looks like. Right. I'm going on and on. Feel free to cut me off.
I think it's great to have already this high level summary of, like, everything, and then we'll get into some of the details. Yeah. Yeah. And so the this all came to a head in October when Destiny,
this LLC, released a video, and it's really quite It's incredible.
Hello fellow new visions and conditions. My name is Olivier Janssens and I'm the founder of Destiny. I have been proud to call myself a new vision for almost a decade now And in that time, I have come to see both the challenges and the immense opportunities of our Ireland. Around the world, special economic zones have transformed entire nations. Dubai is perhaps the clearest example. What was once a small trading port is now a global hub of wealth, innovation, and opportunity. Europe has Monaco and The Middle East has Dubai, but The Americas still like their own equivalent. I I believe Nevis can seize that role. The first country in The Caribbean to create a modern zone this kind will not only uplift its people but could become one of the wealthiest and most desirable regions in the world. When I looked at Nevis I saw a place ready for transformation. The southern corridor of the island is today completely undeveloped and sadly in decline. Erosion eats away more land each year, yet this very area, if properly managed, holds the potential to become the engine of Nevis' future. Today I would like to share with you what we have envisioned for this project and what destiny can become, and and how it will ultimately transform Navis.
Like, weird crypto videos out there, but this one's pretty intense. It's, like, more than fifteen minutes long, and Janssen's I mean, his, like, head, his, like, disembodied head is, like, topping over these landscapes and these beaches. It's very beautiful, and there's this music that sounds like AI Enya. And it's showing images that are also, like, clearly AI generated of, like, multiracial families, like, enjoying themselves by an infinity pool and taking selfies. It's all very, very weird. And he, in this video, is is just pitching his vision. You know? He's saying that they're gonna invest in infrastructure, which is something that SECs always say and and don't always do, that they're gonna do revenue sharing with the people, that they're gonna make a scholarship fund. And so what emerges is this really weird mix of, like, super hardcore libertarianism, but also, like, they the way that they would phrase it is they are creating a nanny state of their own. Because, like, they wanna give money. Like, they wanna do Right. Right. Right. And in fact, this wasn't in the story because it hadn't happened yet. But the latest is that destiny is is telling the Novisian people that every single person on the island is gonna get a $100 a month if this gets approved. And so it's like you're gonna create, yeah, a UBI program, but you're it's it's muddled it's muddled as I'll get out. Right.
That's I mean, it's I think that that's an interesting twist of, like, now what's funny is, like, they're doing the thing that I feel like a lot of libertarians do when they, like, describe the
the corruption on the left in, like, different in different countries and different places. They just say, oh, they just give them free money. And here they are. They're just like, we're gonna give you free money. Let us do it. Handout. So it's okay. Right? And it and so, you know, people who oppose this project are like, what are you trying to do? Bribe us? Like, we're not gonna go for this. What what and how are you even But it's a good deal. It's a good deal. I feel like I guess, you know, sure. I'm sure a $100 a month is is nothing to sniff at if you live near near Nevis and, like, fine. But, you know, at what cost, and what is this gonna create on on your island?
Yeah. I I really wanna stress the point. Like, when I the video is incredible. I mean, it's just it's really it's especially funny for me because I lived in Belgium for, like, four years, And so I know a lot of I immediately tell he's he's, you know, Flemish. Just by his his accent is so is so, like, Flemish, like, farmer. It's it's incredible. Does he sound really country to you? That's so funny. I don't know about country, but just, like, very like, I I I just know so many people who sound like that from living there. I just, like, worked with a lot of Flemish people. I have no hate towards Flemish people, but they are they are funny sounding when they speak English sometimes. Some of them have, the funny accents, and I definitely picked up that accent from living there, to be honest. But, yeah, I mean, it was just, like, really I don't know. To me because Belgium is an interesting country because I I at least my impression of it living there was that it's one of the one of the few European countries that have been able to keep a little bit more of its social democracy in place compared to other ones. It's definitely being eroded away like like everyone else, but I don't know. Libertarians from Belgium are, like, really quite an anomaly for me. Like, if it there I think there's something about if you become libertarian, but you grew up in The Nordics, if you grew up in, like, you know, these places that have strong social democracy, I think there's something like Yeah. There's something very strange to me.
I'm not that person. I think that probably what happened is that this, you know, this guy was in these circles of of Bitcoin early Bitcoin, early Sure. Yeah. Like, it's in the water. You know? So yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I think at the same time, like, in in certain circles in these countries, there are people who are just kind of like America files. Like, they're just really into they they look up to America in various ways. If they grew up in Europe, but they, like, really idolize The US at the same time, I think it's just, like, such a thing where the The the sort of Dubai is, like
Sure. Yeah. What we aspire to. And in fact, part of the pitch is, like, we are gonna have Dubai on The Caribbean or Monaco. Actually, he lives so that that's another, I guess, data Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, this, like, vision of Dubai, like, rising up from the desert from nothing. This narrative, which is bullshit because there was kind of a lot going on there before, you know, the skyscrapers. This idea that you can create this, like, world financial center from nothing using just laws and ideas and foreign foreign workers, it's so appealing, and I understand why it's appealing. And, like, Dubai gets a lot of hate. I happen to, like, kinda like it. I think it's really interesting and and kind of you know, There's a lot of problems, but there's also a lot of interesting and and cool stuff going on there, and also money laundering and and dodgy things. But the model for this enclave is the Dubai International Financial Center, which is which I read about in my book. And it's very interesting because if you look at the DIFC, it looks like mixed use sort of commercial, residential, skyscraper, glitzy, whatever. There's mall. There's cafes. Everything is is, like, contained within there's a mosque. Everything's contained within this complex. And the complex has its own kind of legal system. It's a special economic zone. And within that, it has its own court system, which is parallel to the Emirati court system. And this was established because foreign companies wanted common law. They wanted English language courts. They didn't wanna deal with the Muslim system and the the Emirati judges and whatnot. They wanted their own kind of familiar law, which, again, like, there's a really negative way to spin this, and there's a way of, like, yeah, if you went to law school in, like, The US and, you know, you want you just Right. Right. Law that you know how to practice, and these companies are coming from abroad. So, like, fine. You know, give them the benefit of Yeah. Yeah. Or it's plurality or something. And, like, legal pluralism has has been, like, more the the norm than, like, this very territorial kind of found founded, to say a word, contain, you know, one law, one land, one people kind of mentality. So, like, being aware of that, I think, is important. But the DIFC was was a model for what this guy wanted to build because it could be in one country with a different set of rules. And he did his research, and he found the guy that was behind a lot of the the legal reforms in the DIFC, this guy Mark Beer, who's, you know, clever, very, like, worldly and clever person. Paid he, like, he really went and followed all the people that could execute this. But the problem remains that the people on Nevis, of which there are not very many, there's, like, 13,000 people living here, he still couldn't, like, get them on board. You know? There were polls that showed that, like, 90 plus percent of people thought this was a terrible idea. There were, you know, social media is all all about, like, what the hell's going on. People are upset.
You know? They they don't seem to be able to be bought off. They were not bought by the the $100 a month. Or I guess that's, like, maybe a reaction to the poll. Maybe. It was like, well, we'll give you a $100 a month. Is that a help? Things may change. I mean, I think that,
unfortunately, it's not up to the people. It's up to the government of Saint Kitts, the parliament. You know, there are many layers of approvals that need to happen, and many of those could still happen without people being enthusiastic. Right. Sure. And then, you know, the way that these things go is, like, okay. It gets approved. It gets built. And then it's like, well, what are you gonna do? Not work there? Are you gonna boycott the place? Like, you you it does end up sucking you in the same way that, like, oh, maybe you don't like data centers, but they they open one near you and you don't have a job, and so you go work for the data center. Like, kinda sucks. It's capitalism. But Right. That's the that is what ends up happening with a lot of these SEZs, in fact.
Yeah. I so I actually wanna go a little bit deeper into the history of SEZs because you've you've written quite about quite a bit about it already in in Freeport. So you mentioned, you know, being in Geneva. Somehow, Switzerland being one of the, like, if I understand correctly, like, one of the largest offshore countries with they have no shore. It's completely landlocked. Like, there's a bunch of very weird contradictions, but because of historical circumstances, it's been, like, you know, this European enclave for for financial secrecy and and whatnot. But there are also plenty of examples as well. There there are plenty of failures that I think that there's somehow people are just, like, not so aware of, but there's quite a lot of failures. And then there are some, maybe you could call successes in places like, funny enough, China. China has a lot of special economic zones. And as well actually, you recently learned this after listening to another podcast of yours, but about about Mauritius. But I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about, like, yeah, some of these failures, some of these successes, and if there's anything, like, is there anything you've noticed that that kind of determine whether one is, like, a success or not and how they're managed? Yeah. I mean, that's, like, the million dollar question. So in in I wanna say
so how let's go really, really, really far back. So, like, during you know, in colonial times when their world was ruled by empire empires of various kinds, there were still islands and many of them in The Caribbean where you could trade more freely. So you could buy, like, rum from the whatever. You could you could do stuff that you couldn't do onshore. And so that's, like, a very sort of rudimentary and and early version of offshore. Also, ports, like physical ports in places like Italy where, you know, they would they would welcome Jewish businessmen or Armenians or people that were not, like, part of the country the way that the the ruling classes saw it. This is slightly freer place for enterprise and commerce. Fast forward to, like, the nineteen fifties, there are various experiments for how how to, like, save money in business. And so one sorry. I mean, very broad because, like, there are so many different examples that you you almost have to be very broad to, like, capture the, like, mentality of it. But in the fifties, there was an interesting experiment where, a consulting firm flew to Puerto Rico to see how US sort of onshore US business people could use the Puerto Rican workforce and the Puerto Rican tax fiscal concessions because there's no federal income tax in in Puerto Rico at the time. A consultant went out there. He did the study and, like, ended up bringing over a lot of business from the Mainland to, like, essentially exploit Puerto Rican labor because it's cheaper and the taxes were lower and, like, everything was less expensive. You could bring it back to The US and not pay taxes on on, you know, the the profits. I'm I'm getting it a little muddled, but, like, basically, it was cheaper, easier, and, like, they deemed better to to manufacture things in Puerto Rico and bring it back. So that's just, like, a proto offshoring. This guy then went to the The US Mexico border, established maquiladoras. And so, you know, you see this, like, mechanism of, like, identifying places elsewhere where it's cheaper, sending business. This is all very familiar. Right? This is offshoring. It's been a huge talking point in politics recently. And so whether it works is is almost a question of, like, for how long. Because, yes, at first, it works. The business saves money. The local people get jobs. Everybody's happy. But then the more of these things you add, the more competition there is and the lower the standards get. And so, you know, this expression, the race to the bottom, that's how it happens. It's not just Puerto Rico. It's not just Mexico. It just creates this whole archipelago of places where capital is just chasing profit and, like, lowering costs often at the expense of the people doing the work. So this, like, model of this zone or of this space where things cost less really took hold in the seventies and eighties thanks to organizations like like the UN, like the World Bank, sometimes having sometimes this was tied to export taxes. So imported export taxes. So you could bring materials into a zone and say, like, an African country, and you wouldn't be charged on the duties to bring it in, and then you wouldn't be charged on the export. And so it was known as an export processing zone. The things that were built in the zone were purely for export. And putting zones in, like, countries that were struggling almost became a reflex with these, like, consultants with the international organizations. Like, okay. Let's try that. Let's try that and, like, make jobs. And, again, like, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The more successful ones are the ones, I think, again, in broad terms, where the government is involved, where it's sort of a there's a plan. It's not just like we're gonna give company x a ten year tax holiday, and then they're gonna get out and find a new one. It's like, you know, you have some longer term prospects. Maybe you train workers. Maybe you build infrastructure. And the other types of places where this tends to be more successful is, like, kind of authoritarian places, right, where they have a lot more control over what happens. So, China, great example. You know, you could you could look at the data and say that these zones with with different rules really, really did change the game. Didn't happen in the top down way that a lot of people think it did, and there's a lot of stuff around the edges that is, like, a lot more myth than than than reality. But, yeah, it can work if your goal is to produce more stuff and have companies have bigger profits and also as a byproduct. You know, you do create jobs. Are they good? Sometimes. Are they bad? Often. So that's kind of the the landscape. The the thing that happened after so we have these zones that are really industrial, right, in places like Mauritius, in places like China, in African countries. But the sort of next iteration of this is, like, taking the concept of the enclave and and applying it to, like, finance and applying it to trading. And then beyond that, it's almost like a lifestyle thing, and that is where we are with this Nevis project. That's where we are with Prospera in Honduras. It's like you're not just making widgets. You're not just hiding money. You're, like, putting people there and turning it into a lifestyle. And that's where, like, I don't Prosper gets a lot of flack, like, this Nevis thing. I don't know I I don't think we know, like, what the full effect of that are going to be. Like, already gated communities exist. Already, like, rich people live far, far away, you know, from poor people with huge walls around them. So I'm try I it's it's TBD, like, where the problem is here that doesn't already exist somewhere else. But you if you are a local person who suddenly is told that this is gonna show up in your backyard, you can see why this would be very upsetting.
Right. Yeah. This is, yeah, something I find I I don't know I don't know if you're into into video games, but it really reminds me of this video game called BioShock.
Well, my my husband, he's a big gamer. I I am not.
Yeah. You would you would you would I think you would love this game, honestly. Like, at least the story of the game Yeah. Is about, you know, a guy who's who's very zealous and very, like, radicalized libertarian and this kind of, like, retro futurist world where he brings about this kinda underwater libertarian paradise that then where everything goes bad. People are, like, genetically modifying themselves to shoot fireballs out of their hands and everything kinda gets out of control. And they do have to genetically modify themselves, and they have genetically modified themselves. Like, this is Yeah. Yeah. Like, Milton
genetically modified himself in a special economic zone in Honduras a few years ago. Okay. It was, like, cardiovascular, like, performance. Like, it was whatever. Like, it's you do you, buddy. Like but it's it's happening. Accurate.
Yeah. For sure. Yeah. But I guess the the thing that was kind of that I was thinking then is, like, it sounds to me that the special economic zones is really actually not it's a it it it seems to work more when it's not actually taken like a laissez faire approach, which is kind of what it's often kind of framed as is actually just loosen everything and then let the market do its thing. It'll it'll build things up. But, actually, it's, like, in these in these places where it's actually quite managed, like, high like, that's kind of the the impression that I get from me. I mean, China probably had very extremely highly managed processes as to what what what what became kind of loosened up, what became not, and then they have this whole apparatus for figuring out what were the good things that were not. And but, yeah, I I if you look at if whenever The US does it, it just seems to always kind of fail. I don't know. I mean, I'm gonna steal a line from from a law professor that I I admire greatly, Amarti Castaniami.
He's finished. Anyway, he had a line on a recent paper that said there's no such thing as deregulation. Because, like, actually, you're just replacing some rules with other rules. And this is what these guys wanna do. They don't wanna live in a wallace society. They love rules. They just want the rules to be their rules to benefit them. Right. Right? And this is this is, like, actually the logic of the offshore world. It's not that we're gonna give you a space where you can do whatever you want. It's that we are gonna we're gonna construct a set of laws that protect you when you do certain types of activities. Right? It is it is rich people love law. Corporations love law. They need it. Like, this is what protects them as investors, as business people, like, in contracts. And so nobody actually wants a lawless society. They just wanna pick the laws, which, like, again, like, I can sympathize with that. I too would love to pick my own laws. I'm not, like, trying to build a where I can do it. But I think if you look at it in that way, rather than thinking of it in, like, as an an anarchic, you know, laissez faire, but more what is gonna benefit you, then that it becomes much clearer. The picture becomes much clearer.
Right. Right. Okay. Let let's get a little bit maybe more into some of the specifics here that that was funny you mentioned. So this guy, Olivia Yansens I think it's so funny. His his three interests are Elon Musk, cryptocurrency, and libertarianism.
He wouldn't tell me about them because he wouldn't talk to me. So for all I know, he's like a passionate equestrian or loves art, but he wouldn't talk to me, so I couldn't say. There's maybe more to the man than than his posts would suggest.
Yeah. I mean, compared to his post on Twitter, at least, it does it doesn't I mean, that's basically his Twitter. When I went through it for a bit, it's like, okay. That is literally the only three things he is talking about. But I thought it was interesting that he tried something with Roger Ver. I can't remember I'm forgetting now the the name, but it was like a very similar type of project. This is something, I mean Free society. Yeah. Who is Roger Ver is the guy behind Bitcoin Cash or kind of, like, led the the fork of Bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash. Hasn't really, as far as I can tell, panned out super well for Bitcoin Cash. I don't think it's in too much use now. He got he is one of these, like, more, I'd say, maybe principled libertarians in the sense that he got rid of his US passport, and I think I think I guess he got the Saint Kitts one. And, but then he got in trouble for not paying enough taxes supposedly because the The US has a lot of So the the
the the claim against him is that he didn't disclose the quantity of Bitcoin he was holding at the time of his expatriation when he renounced his citizenship. So when you do this and you you have enough you have a lot of money, you're supposed to say, okay. These are all my assets of all different kinds, and you are you are sort of levied a certain percentage of that, as a mission for your getting out of The US. And, yeah, the IRS alleged that he didn't disclose it all. He said, oh, like, something about his lawyer not doing anyway, he settled $50,000,000. 50,000,000.
Small price to pay, I guess, to not have to go to jail for someone like him. I just, like, think about Roger, and, like, he just owed way more than me. But,
anyway, he yeah. I guess he bowed out. He said he's no longer involved. One can only believe him. You know? But Janssen's kept going and sort of took the same concept and sorta and and, like, maybe professionalized it, sanitized it, maybe made it a little bit more mainstream. He's talked about this in in other kind of q and a's he did in Nevis about how maybe there was a certain amount of youth idealism around this idea of making a new country. And, actually, making a new country is a huge pain in the ass because you have to go to the UN, and you have to print passports, and, like, nobody wants that. That's annoying. That's not, like, for that's not freedom. And so it's actually much easier to negotiate maybe limits on your freedom, but freedom nonetheless, within the structure of a special economic zone because then, you know, the country you're in is gonna do all of that stuff. You can just do the funds. Right.
Yeah. So I think it's kind of interesting because one of the things about the network state stuff that I've also, like, constantly questioned people about why it's like, why why do you need to make your own country? Why do you need another state? Exactly. Because you can already get what you want in in so many other ways. What is kind of the so I feel like that's that's a kind of a within this weird, you know, sect of people or whatever, these cohorts, that's maybe one of the one of the dividing lines is kind of like, do we make a real country or not? Right. Which seems like Somebody who maybe got
got the memo. So Peter Thiel, famously funder of seasteading and via some funds, this Prospera thing. But Thiel, I guess he was smart in the sense that he realized, oh, I can just support Trump and get what I want here, and I don't have to, like, live on a submarine. And so that you know? But but but and so, like, on some level, I almost you've gotta give it to them. They're committed to the bid. They, like, wanna keep thinking about this stuff, and I I wanna keep thinking about this stuff, and it's it's cool. But the network state I don't know. Unclear what the endgame here is. Like, they have this university. They have these, like, seminars. It's more like networking.
That's Right? Yeah. Basically, what it what's what's like, I mean, it's super funny to me. It's it's like they've kind of trapped themselves in the same, you know, types of traps and self criticisms on the left that that kind of exist already about, like, lifestyleism and, like, lifestyle in their politics and, like, commoditizing their politics in in some way. Yeah. That I find really fascinating. And and then they also have their own little divisions within each other that all seem like at least for as an outsider, I'm just like, what what exactly is the difference that, like, kind of, like, for you guys, but I know. Yeah. I guess it's better that you guys disagree than than
all you and I talk about. But so one person who's been on this beat for a super long time is Patrick Friedman. And something I I've been I've talked to him on and off over the years and, like, he's a pretty, like, sympathetic dude to talk to. You know? I don't agree with him a lot of stuff, but, like, something he said very early on really struck me where he was describing, you know, finishing college and sort of being a little itinerant and figuring out basically, what all young people do is figuring out what is your role in the world and where who are you gonna be where you gonna live. And he said that he he was just like and, hey. Maybe I'm being naive, but, like, this really, like, touched me. He said, well, there was nowhere in the world that really aligned with my values. And I was like, yeah, dude. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. And I and I guess, like, the way that he tries to rectify this is through some, you know, sea steading and prospera and, like, these essentially, of what amounts to lifestyle experiments with politics, that's okay. But but don't impose this on the people who need this.
Right. Right. Right. Yeah. I I mean, the I got I've gotten into some fights with with some of these guys, and it's really they just truly believe themselves to be doing something good Yeah. Yeah. By doing it because they have this kind of, like, I think, just internalized view about, I guess, the role of markets and the role of Definitely. Capitalism and capital and and all this stuff that it's kind of hard to like, I've I've got I've I've had some very strange arguments where then they end up getting into a corner where they just justify colonialism. Mhmm. And so the it's like from from the position of trying to stay principled towards, like, what they believe will be the outcome of free markets, development, and building out things, is that, you know, when you talk when you bring up inequalities and the inequalities that are created and the one the inequalities that they're taking advantage of, it's sort of like, yeah. But I'm helping them out, and they you know, these poor people, like Yeah. They're just they just don't know, and I need to come and help them. And then it gets into really murky territories where I had you know, was explained the racial pyramid by by one of these guys, which was very fascinating to be told that I was, you know, lower on the pyramid than he was. But, yeah, I mean, eventually, they just kinda get there. I mean, if you if you push them long enough at times. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, something that that this video that you that we've been talking about that, like, kind of made my ears pop perk up a little bit is he kept saying international families. And, like, that's kinda code for something. Right? That's, like, good. And then you go on the Facebook pages of the the Nevis residents, and they're like, you know, really unflattering comparisons to, like, King Leopold. And you're like, okay. I get where you're going. Yeah. Like, I I you know, without going there. But but but this, like, market just, like, market mentality is all the more weird when it ends with, oh, and we're gonna give you a $100 a month for just, like Yeah. Yeah. Like, that's not market. That's a handout.
True. True. Yeah. I get yeah.
I don't even wanna in their in their vocabulary. Right? Like Yeah. Yeah. I think Yeah. Yeah. Spend a bit too much time trying to make these ideas consistent and, like, moral or somehow principled and and actually, maybe they're just a bunch of guys who wanna do what they wanna do and and, like, only find this political theory in retrospect or, you know, after the fact. My yeah. I mean, what I I think there are people in this world who who read, but not many. You know? And a lot of the political ideas Yeah. I don't wanna see it trickle down, but, like, seep their way into the into their way of not through, like, studying or thinking about things, but just through, like, posts or, like, podcasts. Except this one. Yep. Exactly. Exactly.
I mean, there was, like I don't know. You probably saw the the recent clip of Marc Andreessen being like, yeah. I don't know one you you shouldn't self reflect. Like, all these great men never self reflected. They just did things, and they just kept going. Just such a bizarre bizarre thing to to think and say. It's just like I don't know. It definitely feels like
we are not speaking the same language anymore.
Yeah. I I would like to know, you know, what you noticed or saw with, like, the people of Nevis because you mentioned, like like, the the majority of them in all these polls, they're they're against it. They they find it very strange. Is this something I'm curious. Was it just the video was that bad, or was it, like and people saw the video and then the word spread? Or were locals aware of special economic zones and these types of structures around destiny? Because I imagine this I mean, in in The Caribbean, for sure, this is not the first time people try this. No. I think that in Nevis, the biggest contention was more, like,
why is the premier's wife knocking on my door and trying to buy real estate and not telling me who's buying it? Why is all of this stuff going on behind the scenes even before the video appeared? I think people just felt sort of misled and and, like, there was dishonesty and maybe conflict conflict of interest around the the whole thing. You know, I think there's a lot of mistrust in in this premiere, Mark Brantley, at the moment. And, you know, you hear rumors, like, he's on the this guy's yacht. He's on Roger Ver's yacht. He's taking big so there's just this, like, perception of corruption, if not outright corruption, which I I can't speak to. So that bums people out. The video was super weird. I don't know that there is, like, a deep understanding of special economic zones, but what there is a deep understanding about on Nevis is colonialism. Because guess what? Saint Kitts And Nevis only got independence, you know, forty some years ago. We're for a long time ruled by the British, and and people were around for that. People remember that. And what really struck me when I was recording this is I was looking at videos of town halls and, like, q and a's, and they just turn into lectures about colonialism, and they're in its aftermath and the structures that remain in place and, like, how we got there. I I'm gonna talk about the passports again for a minute because I think it's relevant. So, you know, when you're a small country, you have to make something from nothing. Right? Whether it's, you know, you you have to get by somehow. Right? Saint Kitts is not a great power, nor is Switzerland. So, like, in the very early like, in the thirteenth century, Switzerland had nothing going for it. What did it do? It rented out mercenaries to warring monarchs around it. Right? So this is, like, a very early example that I think is important of, like, having a sort of mercenary mentality and and using your capacity as a state to, like, make money from other countries, to, like, stay in the game. And it's instructive when you also look at the way that Saint Kitts, again, maybe not having a lot of resources to work with besides tourism, saying, okay. Well, we have the citizenship. We have a pretty good passport. People will wanna buy it. Let's market that. Let's make money off of that. So, you know, there are costs, but it you can see how this would appear to be money from nothing. And that is also kind of the organizing principle for the zone. Right? We're just gonna port in this off, have different rules. It's not gonna cost us very much, and they're gonna give us all this money. So so, again, like, you can see where you can see the thread that that ties off these things together. So people were aware that the citizenship program was in some way, like, selling or compromising or commoditizing Saint Kitts' sovereignty. And I think that seeing it displayed or seeing it, like, expressed very explicitly in, like, we are going to take this piece of land and sort of essentially give it to someone else really drove home this colonial aspect of it. I don't know if I your question. It
Tempeh, it's just like like looking I guess for them, you know, in that context, it was just like looking around, knowing your history. It just smells or, like, it it rhymes with the things that you're that you're told about it and that what you what you see. So, I mean, that that that makes a lot of sense. I think yeah. And one of those just, like, crazy things to me as well is just, like, this 13,000 people and nobody knew him. Yeah. At least in in, like, in the reporting or just this like, it I mean Yeah. I've already made it clear I'm a gamer, but, you know, like, the game civilization or, like, age of empires or, like, these types of, like it's almost I feel like they're playing, like, people management games that they're trying they they see themselves as, like, kind of above their their they're looking top down at the world and saying, like, oh, this is a good place to do this. This is a good place to do that. And, like, you know, hoping that they can just, like, click a button to make them Yeah. Exim city.
Start. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think in this case, like, Janssen is an economic citizen of Saint Kitts. Right? So, you know, like, whether he goes there or not, he has he holds he has certain rights as a citizen Mhmm. Which is significant, I think. He's not a foreigner technically, even though he is for all intents and purposes. But, yeah, you saw him around. He he didn't travel there maybe at all. I I can't say for sure, but not one person who I talked to, and I talked to a bunch of people, had ever seen him in real life. Like, it was always on Zoom or, like, you know, on on screen. So and and by the way, you don't need to at the time that he would have applied for citizenship, you don't have you don't even have to go there. You could do it all remotely.
Okay. So in in many cases, he was able to be just kind of, like, you know, in the gamer seats Yeah. Click, you know, get passports and just have to scan you know? Guys, like, have someone on the ground hire the, you know, premier's wife, like, for sure. Right. Right. Right. I guess, in many ways, if you have that much money, that is kind of how you experience the world or, like, can experience the world if you if you choose to. You from a bank account, the wiring money from one place to another around the world in a world that is globalized economically in many ways that you can't just Well, in in any You're basically to go back to network state. Like, territory
is secondary. Right? Those, like, ideas, like, first, you create these digital communities and like minded people, and you gain kind of traction in that way. And only then do you go and, like, try to negotiate for land. So so, yeah, it's it's an interesting perception of, like, physical presence. It's it's very Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So one of the last things that maybe I wanted to get into a little bit is kind of compare it to any the the existing project that kind of I think a lot of people at this point know of, which is Prospera Yeah. Which is based in in Honduras, in in Roatan, which is an island where they've been doing this now for a few years at the very least. They have, like, they have they have one building. I have been asked to go there. Like, I've interacted at least online with some of the people who are highly involved in it. It really weirds me out. I listened to this whole presentation by this one guy, Nicholas Anziger. The presentation was quite it was, like, half an hour or something like that. And at the end, kind of like him talking about how wonderful Prosper is, how wonderful it's going to be, kinda like the big thing that he was, like, harping on at the end, 4% GDP growth per year. Like, that was, like, the big thing that was, like, wow. That was supposed to be, like, the big drop. He expects 4% growth GDP in these type of places. Kinda like this he being in the Prospera Zone or Honduras?
I
don't remember. I mean, this was this was a couple of years ago, but, like, it's just interesting kind of yeah. It's it was funny to me that that Olivier had called Prosper a joke. Oh, yeah.
So I have many questions about that. He called it a joke in a q and a with some people in Nevis, you know, where he was kinda trying to pitch it pitch it. He didn't say I don't know why he thinks it's a joke. I was really surprised that he said that. Maybe he knows that people don't like Prospera and that he wanted to distinguish himself from that. Maybe he has beef with the people involved. I will say I called a lot of people for this story. No one had anything nice to say about this guy. You know? So it's possible that he just, like, doesn't get along with the Prospera people and
Right. It's just kinda personal ego stuff.
All stuff that, like, has nothing to do with what we're talking about. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what aspect of it is a joke. I mean, I there are aspects of it that I think are funny. Like, it's basically a jeopardy cult. It's it's, like, barely a special economic zone. Right? Like, they're just doing wellness retreats. Right? Like, what is there anything else going on there right now besides their their one building and some, like, telework maybe?
Yeah. I mean, it's a lot of just remote workers going through. There's definitely a lot of focus as far as I can tell on the biotech side of things and being able to do this. I mean, they do have, certain regulatory and, like, tax benefits that I know that the current government government has been, like, trying to take away, but then they're, like, they're trying to sue them back through, I think, like, the World Bank or something like that. There's, like, many tax havens in the world.
Like, the the all of the stuff the Prospero is proposing, like, kind of you go Dubai, you could go to, like and so the edge that they seem to have is really just, like, nice beach, you know, weird people who like to hang out together and, like, some you can experiment on yourself genetically or something. I I really Yeah. I'm very curious to see where it goes because maybe they can have a whole successful thriving business of, like, biohacking stuff. There's certainly demand for that. But is that the, like, full kind of expression of this, like, libertarian dream? I don't know. It seems a little bit disappointing. I mean, I think there's something,
there's something I like, I I find in libertarian circles, like, this deep desire of kind of, like, extending the self Yeah. Through technology in a way that is, like, weird, I guess. Or just like I mean, it's it's interesting to think about, like, the philosophy or, like, the you know, what what does technology actually do in many ways? Like, you know, my voice is being extended by the mic and going through a bunch of tubes under the ocean to, like, show up in your to go through your computer that facilitates this this conversation that, of course, is interesting and cool, but I think there's also hyperfixation on technology to specifically extend one's own self to reach their peak Yeah. In some way. And so, like, I think this biotech Yeah.
Yeah. This biotech stuff really fits into that. Yeah. Yeah. And, look, if they're gonna start doing, like, clinical trials in a way that, like, isn't really kosher in The US or Europe or or what have you, then you sort of get into this kind of tricky territory where, like, I personally don't care if you decide that you wanna do this to your body in Roatan. Like, again, like, you know, your body, your choice, but, like, it gets a little dicier if you're, like, in a place where there's a local population and maybe you're signing them off. It it's, like, kinda slippery. Right? You can see, like, the really insidious road this can go down, or it can just be, like, weird and, you know, what it is now. Yeah.
It's it but, like, from what I can from what I've can tell and what I've known from a lot of the stuff that goes on at, like, network school, which the network which Bellagio has been running in in Malaysia. It's it and I've talked I've spoken to many people who've who've gone through there. It it kind of I feel like what's kind of sad or funny about all this is that it's kinda come down to a radical lifestyle ism. It's kind of what it's ultimately a lot of these things have become rather than political movements
Yeah. In in in some way. Europe began for a lot of these folks. They were doing intentional communities. They were doing, like, polyamory, like, you know, West Coast, like, kinda, like,
slightly hippie stuff as well. But what's the lifestyle for the network school? Like, what are the principles of that lifestyle? I'm curious. I mean, a lot of that stuff is just about working out a bunch. Yeah. It's, you know, working which is, like, fine and good. I mean, I think that's, like, you know, yeah, be healthy, be physically healthy, like, eat well. Like, they had they had Brian Johnson there, and supposedly, they're eating a bunch of Brian Johnson's blueprint food. I don't know that much about the diets, but, like, I suppose it's I assume it's probably healthier than, like most people's average diet. Yeah. But the thing that I'm kind of hearing from a lot of people is that a lot of peep those who do go there tend to be people who, like, they just broke up with a partner. They just, like, you know, they quit their job. They're looking for something else. They're kind of exploring. So it's kind of become this, basically, summer camp for people for for adults. I mean, like, young adults to kind of quality Bali coded. Yeah. Yeah. And that was that was one of the that's the other thing that I that I heard from from someone who went is that they, you know, they met a lot of people who were just digital nomads from Bali who liked the the specific digital nomad experience that they would get there versus in Bali because they pay one price, and then they get a bunch of stuff. So it's just like you commoditized your own political movement very quickly and defanged it. Almost like it kind of removed a lot of the radical. Whatever radical was about it is, like, not there and it's not as far as I can tell from people who were there recently, there's not that much discussion about the network states. Yeah. But that's just my hunch about Prospera is that, like, it's wellness stuff.
A little weird, not for me, but, like, there has been so and and I understand that the structure of Prospera is very alarming to Mhmm. Anyone on the like, look at what they're doing. Look at what could they could do with this. But Prospera itself, I don't think is, like, I don't think that it's gonna end there. I think it's something else is gonna pop up that is gonna make Prospera just look like a circus.
Well, thank you, Tasha, so much for coming on the podcast and sharing more about this story and sharing more about your experience of being in Nevis and and your research. Highly recommend to check out the piece. It'll be it'll be linked. It's in the New York Times. Yeah. I think it's it's although it sounds kinda silly when you kinda, like, dig deep into it, I think it's also important just to kinda, like, keep tabs on on what's going on because you never know when these people will also come to your own community
Yeah. To be prepared. There's also really funny stuff that happened, which I won't spoil, but there's some very funny little, like, some people who didn't like the Neva's the Destiny, they made, like, a diss track. They made a rap song that was, like, criticizing it. Awesome. There's a little incident with some Bitcoin machines that were delivered, and everyone saw them. And I was like, what is this going on? So, anyway, you should read the article.
Please send me the diss track. I'll I'll maybe make it the outro. Yeah.
Do you know? You should know by now. South Coast Cove. This is yacht. Frost is in paradise. It appears that the ducky sheriff lost his mind. Oh. Dump on a special sustainable
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