Welcome to Próspera, the private paradise of libertarians, tech entrepreneurs, and biohackers

• Entrepreneurs with a libertarian streak have been creating private cities around the globe.
• The one that has advanced the most is Próspera on an island in Honduras.
• We got a look at the biohacking and building plans underway.

When Lonis Hamaili steps out of the elevator on the 10th floor of Duna Tower, he looks out over an avenue of palm trees, blue sea stretching to the horizon, and a barrier guarded by a man with a pistol. In front of the roof terrace of the residential and office tower, the world lies neatly arranged before him like a string of shells. The handful of buildings in the private city of Próspera line a single road. Hamaili looks at the barrier, which sits on the main street like a higher authority. Access matters, says the 28-year-old. Perhaps the barrier is the most important piece of infrastructure in this city on the Honduran island of Roatán.

Honduras' laws apply only as far as the guarded barrier. Beyond it, Próspera's laws prevail. What those laws look like is determined by the city's owner: the US company Honduras Próspera Inc. Hamaili, a Swedish-born former startup founder, is an employee of that corporation, the vice president for growth at this strange place.

Hamaili looks out at what the private company has already wrested from the jungle in the way of civilization: the paved road, a restaurant, a futuristic dome, and a robot-operated factory. Beyond the palms, a luxury hotel with its own school is nestled by the water. In the café next door, a machine exchanges Bitcoin for dollars. There is not much more infrastructure in Próspera. Not yet. Hamaili is supposed to change that.

"We are going to cut a road through the jungle," he says. Four residential towers are soon supposed to rise above the palm canopy on the lawn in front of it. "In the coming years, we want to settle thousands of people here." Hamaili has in mind entrepreneurs, project managers, and digital nomads with their laptops and ideas. Próspera has about 200 residents and roughly 400 companies. Hamaili says it has already raised around $200 million in capital. He and his fellow builders are not just putting up buildings and infrastructure. They are building a state.

What sounds crazy has become a trend among a small but global and deep-pocketed elite: the founding of largely autonomous private cities. Bitcoin millionaires, tech millionaires, startup founders, and libertarians form the core of this close-knit circle, which challenges the order represented by the 193 UN member states. Like Hamaili and his colleagues, they are working to build private cities that are meant to grow into mini-states, projects that are beginning to take shape around the world.

Off Thailand's coast, a Bitcoin millionaire couple set up home on a habitable platform at sea. In Venezuela, the so-called CryptoCity for "freedom-loving" entrepreneurs is being built. In Norway, the Liberstad project is being created on 860 acres and is seeking the status of a private city. Between Croatia and Serbia, a 2.5-square-mile island in the Danube was occupied in 2015 and declared a sovereign state that issues citizenship.

When President Donald Trump did not rule out taking Greenland, if necessary by military force, and appointed PayPal cofounder Ken Howery as the new ambassador to Denmark, Dryden Brown spoke up. Brown is CEO of the US company Praxis, which a few years ago wanted to buy Greenland and build a private city there. Now Brown sees that goal as closer.

The Próspera philosophy

None of these projects has advanced as far as the Próspera in Honduras. To lure investors, the economically weak Central American nation in 2013 allowed the creation of autonomously administered special economic zones known as Zones for Employment and Economic Development, or ZEDEs.

Instead of police, private security personnel keep order in Próspera. Taxation and state oversight of companies take place independently of Honduran law. The city is run by a technical secretary and a city council, elected in part by the operator and in part by residents. Voting rights depend on the size of one's landholdings.

The idea of having one's own state is not new. The hippies dreamed of it. In Copenhagen, they occupied the Christiania neighborhood in 1971 and declared it an autonomous free town. There were attempts at sea to found independent nations. In 1968, the Italian engineer Giorgio Rosa built a roughly 475-square-yard platform off Italy's coast and sought UN recognition as a nation in its own right.

Now those dreams are returning — only this time the politics are reversed. Instead of hash and world peace, most of the new nation-builders swear by the blessings of capitalism in the face of sweeping change. They are backed by tech billionaires from the United States. Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal, provided the movement's theoretical foundation in his 2009 essay "The Education of a Libertarian."

"I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible," it says. Thiel's proposed way out: the creation of private cities at sea, in cyberspace, or in outer space. Thiel is considered one of Próspera's first investors. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has also invested and has put money into Praxis.

The imagined neo-nations serve as testing grounds for a radically new economic order. States are supposed to function like companies. Instead of simply being born into a nation, residents and the governing authority are meant to consciously enter into a contract on mutual rights and obligations.

Think of it like a cellphone plan: Services are booked as optional extras. Anyone who wants schooling or social insurance has to dig deeper into their pockets. Whether the whole thing becomes a democracy or something else depends on the provider. For some observers, these plans set off alarm bells. Sarah Moser, a professor at McGill University's Department of Geography in Montreal, criticizes the libertarians' "aggressive rhetoric," saying it could sow overall mistrust of state institutions.

Moser and other critics fear that the tech elite want to use such private cities to create tax havens and retreats where their activities will no longer be questioned. At the same time, more startups, digital nomads, and people in search of meaning are drawn to these places.

Light regulation exerts a magnetic pull on drone makers, crypto firms, and medical companies. Biotech firms are already using these largely autonomous zones to push technologies beyond the reach of state oversight. In February, I spent several days in Próspera with leading figures in the movement and earlier attended a conference of libertarian state-builders in Prague. I had unrestricted access in both places and got a glimpse into a parallel world that is increasingly pressing into the real one.

A bio-hacker's paradise

It is a gloomy afternoon in Próspera. Raindrops strike the windows of the coworking space on the first floor of Duna Tower. Leaning over his phone at one of the standing tables, Richard Lee swipes through his photo gallery. One picture shows his hand, smeared with blood. In another, he stares into the camera with pain written across his face.

On the screen are images from Lee's earlier projects. The American carries the results beneath his skin. He grabs the back of his right hand and pulls the skin together. The outline of a plate pushes outward. The 47-year-old stands the implant upright beneath his skin; it stretches like a sail in strong wind. "That's the chip from a credit card. I can pay directly with my hand," Lee says.

He has seven such implants in his body. An RFID chip sits in the tissue between his thumb and index finger, allowing contactless identification, tracking, and data storage via radio waves. Wireless headphones have been embedded in his ears. His favorite implant is a magnet surgically inserted into the nerve endings of his middle fingertip. "I can feel magnetic fields with it," Lee says. "I call it my sixth sense."

The American has lived in Próspera for roughly a year and a half. What he does to his body is called "biohacking." A tight-knit group around the world, connected through social media, carries out such experiments on themselves. It all takes place in a gray area. Lee cannot say whether self-injury of this kind is legal in Próspera. But that is not really the question here. The real question is: Can money be made from it?

Life in the fast lane

The sky above Próspera has cleared a little. Ivan Syrtsov strolls across the terrace in front of the coworking space. With his blond mane, he looks like a surfer. Syrtsov walks past a white satellite dish and looks over the railing at a sign planted in the grass in front of the jungle. "Darien Village — Coming soon," it says. The picture above it shows four towers.

"We will begin construction in a few days," says Syrtsov, 26, a native of Ukraine and the project's manager. He has raised more than $5 million for it through crowdfunding. The towers are due to be completed in November 2026. Syrtsov says he completed a larger construction project back home and considered building in Portugal, but chose Próspera. "If I want to build in Europe, I wait at least four years for a building permit. Do you know how long I waited here?" Syrtsov asks, before answering himself: "Exactly two weeks. Then the project was approved."

Inside the coworking space of Duna Tower, there is a door covered in stickers: "Peace. Love. Bitcoin." "Inflation is theft." "SB 535. Montana's Longevity Law." "Make Death optional." They are common slogans in the movement. The wall in the office behind it is decorated with a huge jungle-tech cyberpunk mural. Niklas Anzinger's head looks tiny beneath it. The German, in his mid-30s, is one of Próspera's most important residents, the man who gets investor money onto the island.

"Two years ago, I set up a venture capital fund. It raised $3.2 million and invested in 32 startups," Anzinger says. The venture capital fund, he says, focuses on businesses in heavily regulated industries such as biotechnology, finance, insurance, crypto, or drones.

One of those companies, Minicircle, became known to millions of viewers through a Netflix documentary. For the cameras, US multimillionaire venture capitalist and longevity guru Bryan Johnson underwent gene therapy at the company in Próspera in search of rejuvenation.

What the companies funded by Anzinger have in common is that they are headquartered in Próspera. That is also the fund's key advantage: There is no drug regulator in Próspera, no building inspection agency, no oversight of drone traffic. Ask Anzinger whether that is risky, and he waves the question away, pointing to what he says is the decisive condition for every project in Próspera: They have to find an insurer willing to price and cover the risk.

Utopia via Powerpoint

What rules and laws should govern these private cities? That question has sparked a debate within the scene. It is being waged in forums, at conferences, and in books. One of the most widely read books on the subject is "The Network State" by Indian-American entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan. In it, he sketches the blueprint for a post-democratic state: a community that comes together on the internet, is administered through blockchain technology, and is ultimately meant to find its way into real life and win recognition as a state.

Srinivasan's concept is no longer purely theoretical. The Network School, a community of "tech optimists," is located on an island off Singapore, in the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone. A German is also shaping the post-democrats' theories of statehood. "Free Private Cities: More Competition in the Most Important Market in the World" is the title of a book by the German lawyer Titus Gebel. Within the scene, it is regarded as a standard work. The author lays out the model of a state with which citizens actively enter into a contract. All services, in his view, should be available as optional add-ons.

Each private city would have to decide for itself how such a state is designed. The spectrum ranges from drug-and-party communities to zero-tolerance states. The market should decide which offerings prevail. In Gebel's system, citizens would vote with their feet, and their money, by moving in or moving out.

The libertarians' chief enemy is the welfare state. "The welfare state corrupts people by encouraging antisocial behavior. It creates massive incentives to behave dishonestly and indecently," Gebel's book argues.

That puts democracy squarely in the crosshairs of the nation-builders. "Every mass democracy, whether direct or parliamentary, will inevitably develop sooner or later into a welfare state," Gebel writes. He posits that the financial ruin of welfare states would be "only a matter of time."

Gebel is also the organizer of the annual Free Cities Conference. Last November, the event series invited guests to a conference center in downtown Prague. The audience was international. Merch stands in the foyer offered economics textbooks, flags with ominous coats of arms, and T-shirts advertising drug legalization. A slogan on stickers and signs seemed to capture a common denominator of the eclectic crowd: "Tax is theft."

Some conversations offstage went like this: "How many Free City conferences have you been to?" a conference attendee from Germany asked a woman also from Germany who had sat down next to him at the lunch buffet.

"This is my first conference. I travel a lot because I work remotely. That's how I discovered these free cities," she said. "And what do you expect from these cities?" he asked. "On the one hand, it's good when you travel and find contacts and infrastructure in places like these. But I also think our states and Western democracies no longer work. Maybe this is a Plan B," she said.

The man, who works in real estate, nodded in agreement. "You know, I've been going to these conferences for five years. At the beginning, they were pure utopias. But now these cities are actually being built," he said. The two learned which projects had been added over the past year immediately after lunch.

Speakers had traveled to Prague from across the world to show photos of construction sites in their presentations. Hardly any forgot to mention why they wanted to flee Western states in the first place.

"Deep reform is nearly impossible," read one presenter's slide, referring to the condition of Western democracies. Another slide spoke of "Europe's dark times." Next to it stood the names of countries, paired with numbers: "United Kingdom, 12,183. Belarus, 6,205. Germany, 3,500." The legend explained what the numbers referred to: "Countries with the most arrests for online comments."

The speaker's implicit promise was that in private cities, everyone could post whatever they wanted, incitement and hate speech included. Broadside after broadside against migration and unprotected borders ran through many presentations. Joe Quirk, a member of the Seasteading Institute, which wants to advance colonization on the ocean's surface, also lashed out at socialists and the media.

The source of Quirk's anger: A few years ago, he and his allies planned a floating island off Tahiti. Because of bad press and protests by islanders who did not want a Big Tech island on their doorstep, the plan had to be abandoned. Other seasteading projects, were carried out — temporarily, for instance, a platform off Thailand.

A project is now planned in the Philippines. The platforms are supposed to be far enough away from coastal states to lie in international waters, yet close enough to shore to allow supplies and transport to reach the island easily. The seasteaders enjoy prominent backing from Silicon Valley. The founder of the Seasteading Institute is Patri Friedman, a former Google engineer and grandson of the famed economist Milton Friedman.

The speakers also brought news to Prague about projects on land. Tim Stern, founder of CryptoCity, had come from Venezuela and presented photos of construction work on the 98-acre project on the Venezuelan holiday island of Isla de Margarita.

The pictures showed excavators leveling the ground and sealing off the site from the outside. According to Stern, 1.3 million square yards of earth have already been moved for the project. Construction of the first houses is due to begin later this year. Plans call for 300 villas, several public buildings, and a harbor. The project is meant to attract wealthy, crypto-oriented businesspeople.

A full delegation from a Danube island between Croatia and Serbia — its president included — had also traveled to Prague. The occupiers call the narrow strip of land Liberland. In their view, the territory belongs neither to Serbia nor to Croatia — and therefore to them. Citizenship documents and flags of Liberland were for sale in the foyer. Flyers advertised a longevity event on the island.

Few of the would-be state founders at the conference were as openly anarchic as the people from Liberland. Most of them are betting on negotiations and contracts, not confrontation with established states. That strategy appears to be working, especially in Central and South America. Poor countries such as Honduras and Venezuela seem willing, in exchange for fees, to hand over small parcels of land — and with them part of their sovereignty.

In the middle of Germany, there appear to be moves away from the territorial state. In the Saxon town of Döbeln, the Central Saxony Citizens' Cooperative is pursuing the goal of having companies take over state functions. Energy supply, schools, and even arbitration courts are supposed to be put on a private footing. The German newspaper Die Zeit reports the project has also found support among politicians from the far-right AfD party.

Trey Goff, Próspera's chief of staff, came to Prague to tout the jungle city. The tax model, in particular, was meant to be alluring. His presentation promised "10 percent flat income tax," "2.5 percent retail sales tax," and "1 percent land value tax." Another slide read: "Accelerated growth and increasing market penetration."

Whether in population numbers, taxes, or arriving air and sea passengers, the curves on the charts all pointed sharply upward. Anyone listening to Goff could easily conclude that in Próspera, every libertarian promise had been fulfilled. Is that really true?

'Make death optional'

Night has fallen over Duna Tower. The lights in the coworking space are dimmed. The cyberpunk motifs on the walls glow phosphorescently. Richard Lee, Ivan Syrtsov, and a dozen other residents and visitors of the city eat fish salad and drink soda from plastic cups. Stickers are laid out on the tables for people to take; the motifs "Make Death optional" and "SB 535" are everywhere. It is a get-together to wind down the evening together.

Syrtsov talks about the problems plaguing him. The rain, which has not stopped for days, is throwing his building plans off. "We will probably have to postpone the start of construction by a few days," he says. The project's website says construction was supposed to have started in December 2025. It is not just the weather that makes projects in Próspera difficult. "We have the infrastructure of an island," another partygoer notes. They feel that, for example, in the power supply. Because there is only one gas-fired power plant on the entire island, supply keeps fluctuating.

Expensive and unreliable, too, is the state-builders' most important infrastructure: the internet connection. Syrtsov runs through how much more expensive a megabit is in Próspera than in other parts of the world where he has lived. The connection sometimes collapses altogether, which is why they installed the white dish on the terrace. It is the Starlink receiver for Elon Musk's internet service.

Richard Lee is wrestling with problems of his own. The credit card embedded in the back of his hand is causing trouble: "It has expired." This card can't be reprogrammed from the outside. "At least once, I'll have to cut open my hand to replace the credit card," he says.

The implant business is unlikely to become mass-market anytime soon. Lee is already eyeing another line of business: gene therapies that promise high profits and higher risks. The subject keeps coming up in the coworking space that evening.

In this procedure, genetic material is introduced into cells. Diseases can be cured by replacing or switching off defective genes. The risks are enormous: immune reactions, liver failure, potentially death in a short time. That is why the treatment is generally allowed only for incurable and life-threatening illnesses. In Próspera, several startups are working on such gene therapies, testing them on perfectly healthy people.

Fueled by the trend toward longevity — the idea of extending life through technical interventions — they are experimenting here with gene therapies meant to make muscles or hair grow. Because muscle loss in old age is seen as a cause of physical decline, the hope is to outsmart death. Hence the slogan "Make Death optional." To pull off that maneuver, you first have to stare death in the face. Participants in such gene therapies must consent to the possibility of dying. In return for those waivers and a payment of roughly $25,000, you can a serum injected at a clinic affiliated with Próspera.

There is demand. Wealthy, experiment-minded medical tourists take part in such programs in Próspera, though the companies reveal no numbers. A new round of testing began again as recently as February.

Outside the private city, such experiments would be unthinkable, and critics are appalled by the experiments. Only recently, an article in MIT Technology Review accused a biotech startup in Próspera of working unscientifically and irresponsibly, an allegation the company rejects.

In the coworking space of Próspera, they speak openly about the pros and cons of gene therapies. "Yes, you can die from these gene therapies," says a serial founder from the United States who is active in Próspera's biotech sector and wanted to remain anonymous.

"No one here is forced to take this risk," he says. Every participant does so voluntarily and in full awareness of the risks. After all, he says, in Germany everyone is also free to smoke. "Smoking will probably kill you. Gene therapy might, too. But if it works, it extends life," the founder says. "Why should adults be forbidden from taking that risk if they want to take it?"

Growing pains

For all the innovation Próspera likes to project, resistance to the experiments coming out of the jungle is growing. Head of growth Lonis Hamaili has left his post on the roof and is now sitting at the living room table on the eighth floor of Duna Tower. Despite the progress in Próspera, he is grappling with a problem beyond his control: the reluctance of large parts of Honduran politics toward the private city.

"The period leading up to the last elections really held us back," Hamaili says. He says the communists, in particular, would have liked to pull the plug on the libertarian project. Other parties are also critical of the private city. In 2022, the Honduran Congress repealed the law creating the ZEDE special economic zones. Since then, Próspera has been considered illegal.

The operators turned to the World Bank's arbitration court in Washington, where they filed claims for damages worth billions. The matter has not yet been decided. Próspera got a tailwind from Honduras' presidential election last November. The winner, the conservative businessman Nasry Asfura, is considered a supporter of the private city.

Hamaili hopes investment will flow again into the private city and let the state within a state flourish. Próspera is to keep growing. More companies are supposed to come this year, more gene therapies to be tested, and more buildings to be constructed. Richard Lee, too, wants to make progress. In just a few months, he plans to test on himself the gene therapy for muscle growth that he developed.

"I'm scared to death of the trials," he says. So why put himself through this ordeal? "Because the curiosity is simply greater." Ivan Syrtsov is also still working on his construction project. At the end of March, another message arrives from him. He sends a photo of the construction work that has now begun.

Not everyone sees the island's future so positively. Moser, the researcher, stresses that under Honduran law, Próspera is now unlawful. She describes the project as "fundamentally a colonial initiative that emerged in the context of extreme corruption and political abuses under the previous Honduran presidency."

It was designed, she says, "as the short-term pursuit of profit by people" who "have no ties to Honduras and are not rooted there." She notes that Próspera has a 50-year contract, of which just under 38 years remain. In practice, she says, that all but rules out "long-term chances of survival."

Other projects also show how uncertain the future of private cities like Próspera is. The Netflix-dramatized example of engineer Giorgio Rosa's Rose Island illustrates how forcefully established states respond to parallel state-like constructs: The Italian navy ultimately sank the island.

There are also tensions with Croatian police in Liberland. The seasteading project off Thailand was cleared by the local navy as far back as 2019. Had the two fugitive builders, Chad Elwartowski and his partner Supranee Thepdet, been caught, they could have faced the death penalty.

Yet Elwartowski now appears to have found a place at sea where he wants to try again with his floating mini-state: off the coast of Próspera.

This story originally ran in Welt and appears on Business Insider through the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network. The network publishes major stories from the Axel Springer network of publications, a worldwide group of news outlets that includes Business Insider.

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