In a hotel-turned-campus on a reclaimed island in Malaysia, crypto and tech entrepreneurs are building software, chomping down on Australian prime rib-eye, hitting the gym – and getting schooled in a radical blueprint for creating new sovereign states from scratch.
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They have descended on Forest City to attend Network School, the brainchild of former Coinbase executive and The Network State author Balaji Srinivasan. In this troubled megaproject once envisaged to house some 50 times its current population, they are conducting a real-life experiment of sorts with Srinivasan’s vision of “start-up societies” defined less by historical territory than by shared beliefs in technology, cryptocurrency and light regulation.
Techno-utopian ideas have circulated in Silicon Valley and the cryptocurrency community for well over a decade, with few signs of gaining wider acceptance. Yet Srinivasan is doubling down on his bet that the world is ripe for his brand of nation-state disruption, and is making Forest City a testing ground for plans to roll out the movement globally.
“Just like at age 18 you choose your college, at age 18 you’ll choose your country,” Srinivasan said on Thursday in a keynote speech at the Bitcoin Asia conference in Hong Kong. “And it’s already starting with the start-up societies.”
Recent events have provided some tailwind for the quixotic effort. The election of US President Donald Trump and the cryptocurrency-friendly policies he has pursued have rapidly pushed the asset class into the financial mainstream.
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More broadly, Trump’s win was also seen as a repudiation of the “woke” ideology and regulatory overreach Srinivasan has long criticised. While it is not clear exactly why Srinivasan picked Forest City for his school, the location offers some distinct advantages, not least low rents and easy access to Singapore and its international airport.
Officials seeking to stave off political fallout from what has been widely derided as a white elephant have taken a raft of measures to increase its appeal, including designating it a duty-free zone. Authorities have dangled a zero per cent tax rate for family offices – investment vehicles for the ultra-rich – to set up shop there.