Crypto Billionaires Build a World Where Money Buys Votes
Collected Photo
Liberland does not look like much from a boat. It is a flat, muddy stretch of floodplain on the Danube River, dotted with alder trees, tents, and treehouses.
However, this disputed territory between Serbia and Croatia is connected to some of the world’s wealthiest men, including the primary investor in the Trump family’s crypto business.
In sharp contrast to the muddy reality, a virtual reality version of Liberland designed by the ZHA architecture firm features gleaming towers and floating public parks.
Founded by President Vít Jedlička, this micronation aims to be a truly libertarian, digital country running on the same technology as cryptocurrencies. Though it may sound like a joke, Liberland is bankrolled by crypto billionaires who believe that government itself can be replaced.
Voting with Money
In most democracies, every citizen has an equal vote. In Liberland, things are different. Using a purchasable crypto token called Liberland Merits, power is directly tied to wealth.
Jedlička said, “So the people that have more Merits are able to have more say in who is going to be in the leadership of the country.”
This effectively means you can vote directly with your money. Liberland is also entirely tax-free.
Interior Minister Ivan Pernar, a controversial former Croatian MP, explained the philosophy, “Usually, people who believe in freedom, decentralised finances and so on, they tend to be from the upper class of society. If you make zero selection and you say whoever comes on [the] boat is welcome, we would end up like [the] UK. We don’t want that.”
When asked if some people have more liberty than others, Pernar compared the poor to animals, added, “Don’t feed the animals, because if you do, they will be accustomed to that and they will lose [the] ability to feed themselves. The same is with people”.
To the wealthy backers of Liberland, helping the poor or any form of centralized redistribution of wealth is seen as an affront to individual liberty.
The Banana Billionaire and the Trump Connection
Liberland’s Prime Minister is the Chinese crypto titan Justin Sun, who is worth an estimated $8.5 billion. Sun is famous for purchasing a piece of art - a banana duct-taped to a wall - for $6.2 million and eating it.
While US regulators have accused him of fraud and market manipulation (charges he denies), his company, Tron, is a massive blockchain network used to run Liberland’s government.
According to TRM Labs, Tron is also a major platform for moving illicit crypto, including funds tied to Hamas, Hezbollah, and drug cartels. Sun, however, claims to have innovated collaborations with law enforcement to tackle these transactions.
Sun is also the lead token investor in the Trump family’s crypto business, World Liberty Financial, investing over $75 million. Trump himself has reportedly made more than $1.4 billion from crypto in the past year.
Sun views the nation-state as outdated, a sentiment shared after his $29 million flight to space with Blue Origin, noting that the “planet itself is boundaryless”.
CEO-Kings and Corporate Monarchies
The ideas behind Liberland are part of a broader movement including Prospera in Honduras and Tim Draper’s Draper Nation.
Many of these concepts trace back to thinker Curtis Yarvin, founder of the “Dark Enlightenment,” whose fans include Vice-President JD Vance and billionaire Peter Thiel.
Yarvin’s “Patchwork” concept envisions replacing nation-states with sovereign mini-countries owned by shareholders and ruled by “CEO-kings”.
These monarchs would be accountable to a hidden board of shareholders who could potentially control the military and police through a “crypto dingus” capable of disabling guns.
As the crypto lobby surpasses the fossil fuel industry in political influence, spending $238 million in the most recent US election cycle, the vision of these billionaires is becoming clearer.
While they claim blockchain can free people from government control, critics note that in every example, wealth and power simply flow to whoever controls the technology.
Source: BBC (adapted)
