Crypto Bro Founds Libertarian Colony on Caribbean Island – The Tuesday AM Quickie 12/16/25
Trump is colluding with red-state attorneys general to juice the affordability crisis even harder by forcing nearly 8 million people into student loan repayment. I wrote about it and the borrowers I talked to said they’ll have to find additional side gigs to come up with the money. Bye for now, Corey is back tomorrow. - Whitney
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12/16: Sam and Emma are in the studio today and their guests are Abdul El-Sayed, Senate candidate running in the Michigan Democratic primary, and Jesse Rabinowitz, communications director at the National Homelessness Law Center.
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Today you’ll read about a bitcoin millionaire’s creepy Caribbean colony, the ongoing search for the Brown University shooter, and the vague peace proposal for Ukraine.
THE BIG NEWS
Crypto Bro Founds Libertarian Colony on Caribbean Island
Bitcoin millionaire Olivier Janssens bought land on Nevis for a development he’s calling “Destiny,” which would reshape the island’s south coast with villas and medical clinics, and operate under its own court system, the Financial Times reported. Editors at the pink paper referred to the colony as a “community,” which I suppose is one way to put it.
The colony is enabled under a new Nevisian law that “was passed without any consultation with the public,” Kelvin Daly, a member of the opposition Nevis Reform Party, told the FT. “This causes a real anxiety among the general population.” The project is part of the “network state” movement, in which rich tech and crypto bros found their own territories in places they think they can exploit. Some of the colonies “have collectively received hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital from funds backed by the likes of investors Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, OpenAI founder Sam Altman and Brian Armstrong, Coinbase chief executive. Many remain theoretical at this point.” But not all. Per the FT:
The founder of Próspera, a gated private community on a Honduran island run by a Delaware-based company, claims to have created more than 4,000 jobs and brought more than $150mn in foreign direct investment. The Honduran government has tried to repeal its charter and Próspera is now suing the government for $11bn for lost future profits. In summer 2025, the St Kitts and Nevis government passed the Special Sustainability Zones Authorisation Act, which allows the government to enter into agreements for developments such as Destiny. Janssens is in negotiations with the government and has said the project will invest $50mn into Nevis’s infrastructure if it goes ahead.
Janssens referred to Nevis as a “host nation,” which he’s colonizing because “I don’t trust politicians . . . We’re just like, ‘Leave us alone and let us do our things.’” Please imagine for yourself what I hope happens next! And, for unrelated educational purposes only, look up how James Cook spent his last Valentine’s Day.