Praxis, the venture-backed startup looking to build a “network state,” has reportedly made a bid to “buy” Greenland, project founder Dryden Brown said on X on Tuesday.
If the attempt sounds eerily similar to Donald Trump’s overture to buy Greenland in 2019, during his first administration, it’s because Brown says that was his inspiration. Like Trump, Brown said he is attracted to the island's abundant natural resources and geopolitically strategic location. In short, it's the perfect place to create a new city.
“First, some context: I’m building a crypto-native country called @praxisnation, with a network of people who’ve founded companies worth [more than] $400 billion. We are scouting for physical territory to build our first city,” Brown said.
Praxis is among a lineage of projects looking to create new breakaway nations and cities. While there is a long history of so-called micronations — from the Grand Duchy of Flandrensis in Antarctica to the Principality of Sealand built on an abandoned World War II-era sea fort — Brown’s project is looking to upgrade the effort for the internet age.
The idea of creating new sovereign territories has become a part of Silicon Valley zeitgeist, with many technologists expressing the view that burdensome regulations are slowing progress. Serial investor and thought leader Balaji Srinivasan, for instance, has championed the idea of “network states,” a vision where online communities formed around shared interests and values can eventually crowdfund capital to purchase physical land where they can write their own laws.
In October, the “internet-native alliance” Praxis raised $525 million in funding from several high-profile investors to fund its efforts. Brown has previously said plans to create a 10,000-population city in the Mediterranean were on the drawing board.
Based largely online, the project reportedly has thousands of members (a.k.a. “citizens”) worldwide and a physical hub in New York City. The waiting list to move to the yet-to-be-built city is reportedly northward of 50,000. The collective citizenry has “founded companies worth [over] $400 billion."
Brown said he traveled to the capital city of Nuuk, Greenland during the summer with three Praxis members looking to strike a deal. After reportedly cold-calling government officials, the Praxians allegedly took “meetings at Parliament.”
“As part of this deal, Praxis would seek uninhabited, unused territory for the development of a tax-paying charter city, or perhaps something bigger, with deeper independence: A privatized charter state,” Brown said. He added that the city would be jointly owned by “Praxis Citizens, the Greenlandic government, and each individual Greenlander,” with ownership represented by tokens.
“With the ability to create laws and regulations, we could actually experiment with terraforming,” he said, noting that the proposed city would serve as a proving ground for an outpost being planned for Mars called Terminus.
While Brown said Greenlanders could be enticed by the effort — largely because Praxis would help extract natural resources and pay taxes — the crypto industry has been littered with failed micronations, including Akon City, proposed by the eponymous rapper, and Satoshi Island, a project to acquire an entire island near Vanuatu.
“Lol, I think that's marketing,” Robert Leshner, the founder of SuperState and early Praxis backer, told The Block when asked about Brown’s Greenlandic dreams.
That said, some recent efforts to create charter cities have gained momentum. Próspera, a venture-financed city built in a special economic zone in Honduras, has been granted a charter to set its own fiscal, regulatory and legal frameworks — though it is engaged in a legal dispute with the government.
And while the Bitcoin City tax haven proposed by El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele hasn’t yet broken ground, a region in the country called Playa El Zonte, also known as "Bitcoin Beach,” has become a bona fide crypto hub.
Brown did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
“I think they're both good ideas,” Roko Mijic, the internet personality behind the “Roko’s Basilisk” meme about AI, told The Block. “but I prefer ice,” he added, referring to his own proposal to build a floating city in the ocean.
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