Cash News
The guy with the Tesla chip in his hand is Patri Friedman, a grandson of the economist Milton Friedman the founder of Pronomos Capital, one of Próspera’s funders.The company, backed by tech billionaires Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen (and advised by Srinivasan), says it is funding similar projects around the globe, including in Africa and Asia. The basic idea: Work with governments to create regulation-free, privately-owned territories that, over time, will negotiate for full sovereignty (or file massive lawsuits against their host governments, if the experience of Honduras is any indication).
Meanwhile, it’s not clear that politicians in Washington, who are among the least tech-savvy people in America, have any clue about this Network State movement—let alone the underlying goals it shares with the crypto industry. Most of them probably don’t even get how crypto works. I hate to admit it, but Peter Thiel was right when he said in a 1999 speech predicting the rise of crypto politics, “The people in D.C. are completely backwards, they don’t understand any of the technology and—even to the extent they can—it can’t be stopped.”
Of course, ignorance of an industry never prevented members of Congress from doing its bidding. In a matter of months, crypto has proven that it’s powerful enough to buy politicians’ positions—either directly, through generous campaign contributions, or indirectly, by threatening to fund their opponents. It truly can’t be stopped, it seems.