Ep. 111: Antonio García Martínez on Crypto, Network States, and Building New Cities

Antonio Garcia Martinez is a writer, entrepreneur, and director at Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum L2. Before that he sold a startup to Twitter, worked on ads at Facebook, and wrote Chaos Monkeys, his memoir about the early ad-tech world.This session was recorded live in the Infinity Dome in Prospera. Antonio explains why crypto is not just a new financial system. It is a direct challenge to one of the oldest powers of the state: controlling money and deciding who owns what. If you can send USDC on Base to anyone in the room in less than a second for less than a cent, and no bank or government can stop it, the foundations of the current world start to shift.From there, we move into the friction between digital freedom and physical geography. Antonio, Niklas and Eric talk about Próspera as a real world network state, why San Francisco stays a magnet even when it fails on the basics, and which places have the energy to become new tech hubs. Miami, Dubai, Singapore, and the American West all come up as examples. They also look at the hard questions: how to build a business model for charter cities, how the US might allow Prospera-style zones through interstate compacts, and what needs to change in education and citizenship to attract long-term residents.This is a conversation about the future of crypto, but also about the future of how people live, build, and move. It is one of the clearest snapshots of where the network state movement is heading.More about Antonio’s work:* Website* Books* LinkedinExplore Infinita City:* Explore the Archive: The Infinita City Times* Visit Infinita City* Join the Builders’ Hub on Telegram* Follow Infinita City on X This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.infinitacitytimes.com