Tech elites are starting their own for-profit cities

Balaji Srinivasan, former chief technology officer of Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, turns to address the hundreds of tech workers and investors filling a darkened arena in Singapore — all there to learn how to build empires. “I think it’s fair to say,” he pronounces from the stage, palms outstretched, “in 2025, we have a movement.” It is early October and Srinivasan is hosting what he’s called the Network State Conference, an event targeting “those interested in founding, funding and finding new communities”. For years, the entrepreneur has preached to clubby tech gatherings that they should gather their online comrades and set up a physical homeland — a network state, be that a city or a country — by joining together to buy land. He has hailed this as the “ultimate exit” by Silicon Valley from “failing” US institutions and democracy. But what was a fringe concept a matter of years ago is now attracting more interest as scrappy start-up chief executives and aggrieved billionai

Balaji Srinivasan, former chief technology officer of Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, turns to address the hundreds of tech workers and investors filling a darkened arena in Singapore — all there to learn how to build empires. “I think it’s fair to say,” he pronounces from the stage, palms outstretched, “in 2025, we have a movement.” It is early October and Srinivasan is hosting what he’s called the Network State Conference, an event targeting “those interested in founding, funding and finding new communities”. For years, the entrepreneur has preached to clubby tech gatherings that they