#1098 Erick Brimen On Starting A NEW City Of The Future

Erick Brimen is the Founder & CEO of Próspera. In this conversation, we discuss building new cities, why it's so important, the risks associated with this project, why Prospera is taking on this challenge, and where Erick sees as the next frontier for city construction. ======================= If you’re trying to grow and preserve your crypto-wealth, optimizing your taxes is just as lucrative as trying to find the next hidden gem. Alto IRA can help you invest in crypto in tax-advantaged ways to help you preserve your hard earned money. Alto CryptoIRA lets you invest in more than 200 different coins and tokens with all the same tax advantages of an IRA. They make it easy to fund your Alternative IRA or CryptoIRA via your 401(k) or IRA rollover or by contributing directly from your bank account. So, ready to take your investments to the next level? Diversify like the pros and trade without tax headaches. Open an Alto CryptoIRA to invest in crypto tax-free. Just go to https://altoira.com/pomp ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp ======================= Amberdata provides the critical data infrastructure enabling financial institutions to participate in the digital asset class. We deliver comprehensive data and insights into blockchain networks, crypto markets, and decentralized finance. Download our Digital Asset Data Guide at https://www.amberdata.io/pomp ======================= Bullish is a powerful new exchange for digital assets that offers deep liquidity, automated market making, and industry-leading security. Combining the innovations of DeFi with the regulated environment of traditional finance, Bullish empowers users to trade with certainty and earn passively at scale across variable market conditions, in an environment backed by multibillion-dollar liquidity contributions from the Bullish Treasury. Visit bullish.com/pomp today to learn more. Note: Bullish is licensed by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission. Virtual assets and related products are high risk. Consult your investment advisor and trade responsibly. Bullish is available in select locations only and not to U. S persons. Visit bullish.com/legal for important information and risk warnings. ======================= Arculus is the next generation crypto & NFT cold storage wallet that combines one of the world’s strongest security protocols with the easiest to use form factor and app. Arculus requires 3-Factor Authentication to ensure only you have access to your digital assets – something you know – a PIN, something you have – the Arculus Key Card, and biometrics. Learn more and buy it now on getarculus.com. Use promo code POMP to save 15%. Remember, with Arculus, it’s your keys, your crypto. =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Eric Bryman is with Prospera. In this conversation, we talk about building new cities. Why exactly? They've chosen Roatan and Honduras. What the pros and cons of trying this brand new exploratory process is, and where exactly he sees them going and building new cities in the future. I really enjoyed this conversation with Eric, and I hope you guys enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I first want to talk about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Alto IRA. They can help you invest in Bitcoin and crypto in a tax advantaged way. That helps you preserve your hard earned

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:25Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:37Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:00Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Eric here with me. I thought a great place to start would be the idea of building a new city is absolutely insane in some people's eyes. Why do we need to build new cities? What is the problem that people are trying to address across all these various initiatives?

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Great to be here. Thank you. Listen, I mean, cities are places where humans live and thrive optimally. It's been shown throughout history. You got population growing all over the world, but most importantly, it's about catalyzing prosperity. I think you got to build new cities so that more humans live more prosperous lives. And with technology in the hardware space, lagging in some ways, the area that people don't talk enough about is it's acknowledging the governance space. And so instead of trying to change existing systems, create new ones, and the delivery mechanism to do so is a city.

• 3:53Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you see the existing systems, you talked about governance, like what are the governance mechanisms that when you all say, hey, we got to create something new, like what are those governance mechanisms that you want to recreate?

• 4:05Speaker 02

  Sure. When people think of government, it's a mixed basket of things. But the essence of governance comes down to three things. Good rules and the administration thereof that everybody that's opted in lives by. The administration of justice in a manner that's efficient and effective and shared security so that you don't have to worry about protecting your physical integrity or your belongings more than you focus on building value and wealth. So those are the three layers that are essentially the provision of governance. Within each of them, I could go in great detail. But of the first one, the most important outcome of it is that you have clearly defined and well-protected property rights, which of course starts with your body.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  And as a derivative thereof, the goods and services that you produce as a result. And so the things that are essentially needed to do that start with a registry and then hop into the other two layers that I mentioned.

• 5:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you think about starting over, right, or building from scratch, you all specifically at Prospera have gone to Honduras. You've gotten this zone for economic development in Roatan, which is an island. Talk a little bit about why Honduras, why Roatan, and why Pursu? In some ways like this jurisdictional arbitrage to some degree around this zone for economic development.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Sure. Well, I'll start with the reasons why. Why I in particular started, why my group Prosperous and Pursus. And it's really about two extremes of human condition. On the one extreme, you have vast poverty around the world. You have likely billions of people living substantially below their potential. And that's a tragedy for a number of reasons, and it's generally more like a negative feeling. You want to try to fix something bad. On the opposite extreme of that, there's tremendous missed opportunity in the most pioneering, advanced minds everywhere in the world where newer technologies, newer services are not being created fast enough or not being created at all. And that's also a tragedy.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  And so Prospera exists to alleviate the pain points that results in those extreme conditions of human existence.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Why Honduras and why Rotterdam in particular? It's because after doing a lot of research over about a decade, it was obvious that it was the best place in the world to do what we're currently doing.

• 6:29Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you do the research? Like when you go through the research process, are you like Googling? Are you like visiting places? Like what does that research look like?

• 6:34Speaker 02

  It's both. In my case in particular, I've been at this pretty much since college in one form or another. But in 2014, started a venture capital fund called New Way Capital that started in partnership with Babson to fund at the time called Enterprise Cities around the world. And in partnership with Babson, we visited a number of countries, explored the regulatory options that they had. And it was very experiential. Our partners on the ground, Shankar Singham in particular, you know, he had already done a lot of groundwork. But research is not desktop because a lot of what is being done is about creating something new, never been done before. So there isn't, back then, there wasn't the body of knowledge so you could, you know, research.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  It was about sitting with decision makers, explaining the vision, understanding their legal systems and procedures, and trying to gauge as best as possible political capital and will, as well as the process that would need to be followed, and create opportunities for them to validate that they're a savers and they can move the ball forward. And of all the countries in the world, Honduras actually did it. In fact, did it twice when it came to reforming its constitution, to creating what is called, you know, the special economic zones in the region, but ZEDs in particular, that go far deeper to enable reform than any other special economic zone in the region had up until that point done.

• 7:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Why does Honduras want to create these special economic zones? Like what's the value to them?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  For Honduras, it's about foreign direct investment, job creation, and about trying something new. It's a bit of a, it's a bit of an experiment in how to solve the problems that they've been plagued with and have not been able to solve for decades. And looking at other places in the world like Dubai and Hong Kong and Singapore and saying, well, obviously, a small piece of land can generate unimaginable prosperity for many, many people. What if we try to adopt something like that?

• 8:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you see that playing out, what is the, the way they measure it? Is it just pure like aggregate job creation? Is it number of dollars invested? Like how do they measure success in your opinion?

• 8:46Speaker 02

  By far, the most important KPI is number of jobs that are paying not only above minimum wage, but above average in the country, which I must say in Honduras unfortunately is not a very high bar, but it's about jobs primarily. The foreign direct investment obviously is a catalyst for jobs, but it's really more about jobs. And as a result, the negotiation and the legal system requires that ninety, ninety percent of laborers are Hondurans, of employees are Hondurans. Of course, you can have consultants, if you're a shareholder of a company, you don't count, and that is provided you can find a Honduran that's qualified for the particular job that you're looking to fill. So it's really about jobs.

• 9:28Anthony Pompliano?

  And so as we watch this play out, talk to me about the process from, hey, we want to go build these enterprise cities, to Honduras has passed the special economic zone legislation, and now, okay, the foundation is laid, we can go and actually begin executing. What was that process like?

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Sure. It's worth mentioning, mostly known these days for being CEO of Prosper, but I'm also CEO of New Way Capital, which is a still a going concern. And so the process really starts with New Way Capital. And the way it looks like, as I mentioned earlier, is you go and in an environment that, as best as you can tell, seems to be well-suited and has a population, but more importantly, above everything else, there seems to be the political will to drive substantial change. And the desktop research version of it is you're following either emerging leaders that have not yet been elected, or one way or another taking power, or that have taken power and are saying, quote unquote, "the right things."

• 10:28Speaker 02

  It's hard to differentiate from what they say to what they do, but at least if they're not even saying the right things, there's not a good chance. So back in 2014, 2015, we prospected a number of jurisdictions, even including the US. I was fortunate to be asked by Governor Doug Ducey from Arizona to join a special committee that he created as a co-chairman to explore prosperity zones in the states. And we went farther in one year than anybody thought we would. And I'm very bullish about the possibility of when the time is right, pursuing it again in the US. Basically, in an abstract way, it starts with understanding whether or not there's political capital.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  And then there's a back and forth of refining what the leadership is actually looking for and kind of customizing a bit what we by now have developed as a standard. And then pushing the political legislative process. At some point, there is the enabling legislation, rules and regulations that go along with it. And in our case, in Honduras in particular, then we go from there to creating the intra-zone statutes and norms to then literally groundbreaking and start building, which is where we are now for a few years.

• 11:43Anthony Pompliano?

  So the groundbreaking component, when most people think of building, they're like, oh, you're gonna build a house. Like, you have to build a road, you have to build sewage, you have to build trash cleanup. Like, there's a city infrastructure, I'm guessing, that gets built here. Like, how do you go about doing that?

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, indeed, to build a city, you can say, okay, let's just go and build city at the scale of city from day one. It's not generally the way you build a business, right? Generally, you build a business by creating prototypes, MVPs, and then scaling out from there. In our approach to new city building, we're very much following a startup approach. Meaning, obviously, we have a master plan in the beginning. We have a vision of where we think this is gonna be headed 10, 20, 30 years down the road. But unlike a typical central state power, thinking, you know, China building what are now ghost cities. We're not deploying, you know, overnight billions of dollars to build roads and buildings that we then hope get filled.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  We do it in a very scalable way. So we have a master plan, and from there, we say, what would make most sense as phase one of this master plan? And then who are the tenants, and let's go get them. And then those tenants, and in most cases, co-creators in our worldview, then they help set the tone for what actually should happen next, and next, and next. So what you created as your master plan initially, you, you know, in just a couple of years, we're already realizing it's very evolved. But the version we have now is much more real because it's responding to actual market demand as opposed to what we thought, you know, four years ago would be the case.

• 13:19Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the first thing you had to build? Once you get to Row 10, and you're like, okay, cool, this is gonna be the site, what do you have to build?

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Well, the very first building we built, we called the Beta Building. And it was a building that was purposely designed to be very flexible. It had both office and residential in it. And we were wondering, are we going to be pretty much initially more like a tourist destination of, hey, here's the place where a future city will come? Or are we going to have employees and companies setting up? And, you know, is it going to be more tangible in that way? Turns out that it was the latter. And we never actually occupied the residential spaces. And we converted them, we bought the furniture, but we never actually laid the beds or anything like that. We instead set up work desks and that building got quickly overrun with market demand for workers

• 14:08Speaker 02

  that during COVID were mostly remote workers. So we broke ground May 2020, right? Right in the smack middle of the pandemic. And so the first industry that was very responsive was remote work. And then from there, we built additional modules and facility, looking more towards expanding office and then be building the residential needs for the workers that are coming to the island to fill these high paying jobs.

• 14:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And why would somebody want their workers to work from Roatan? Is it a tax incentive? Is it just the workers decided to go there by themselves and their companies don't even know where they are? Like, what part of remote work makes it attractive?

• 14:51Speaker 02

  So it's, when people think remote work, you know, it's more like digital nomads doing remote work. That's not the way it's actually working in its inception right now. It's more the other way around. It's mostly US firms looking for specialized labor. And their incentives is the ease of hiring and working with them as well as the fact that it's cheaper. So for the Honduran employee, they're earning a lot more than they would otherwise be earning. But for the company hiring them, they're paying them less than they would pay, say, an accountant or lawyer in New York City or Boston or, you know, or in Texas where a lot of our customers are in. So there's a cost arbitrage, no doubts about it. But then there's the sense that you can skip.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Much more rapidly and with less friction. You know, labor regulations are, you know, it's it's it's it's an industry that most people don't think of as an industry. But it is, and it's highly regulated, even in the US. Honduras, uh, it's highly regulated too, but within Prospera, we have a very efficient way to provide labor services.

• 15:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so these are Honduran citizens mostly that are actually living and working in this environment?

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Yep, the the vast majority of the employees on the ground are Hondurans. That are either from the island already. Or come from the mainland to the island for these much better job opportunities that we're able to create.

• 16:12Anthony Pompliano?

  How far is Roatan from Honduras?

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Uh, the physical distance between the northern shore of Honduras and Roatan is about forty two miles.

• 16:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so so uh decent enough where like this is a a decision, a big decision, somebody said, they're not going back and forth every day.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  It's a relocation decision.

• 16:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  They are daily ferries twice a day and then their flights, you know, four or five times a day, but it's it's not a twenty minute drive to a different suburb. This is a you relocating, say, from San Francisco to New York or or, you know, Houston. It's a big decision.

• 16:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And uh when we think about Roatan as a uh an island, uh what has been the reception? They like this idea because there's higher paying jobs, they don't like the decision because there's foreigners coming there, like what has been the general uh?

• 16:56Speaker 02

  It's been mixed. Um, and I think anything new is initially faced with a bit of skepticism and resistance. And that's certainly been the case uh with our vision. But uh historically, given the political effort that this took and the parties involved in making it happen. And the fact that in in any democracy, but certainly in in this country. Whenever you have a change of power, you know, whatever the prior administration did, this just by default, bad, right? You know, this was a major undertaking by the prior administration in power. I mean, they had to reform the constitution twice. So all the opposition parties, you know, were throwing rock at it at some point, and now one of the opposition parties is in power.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  So it it's been inflated to some extent because of the political aspect of it. However, what's actually happening on the ground is that we are building, we're hiring, we're creating opportunities, we're bringing technologies. And industries that would have never come to Roatan otherwise. And um. Surely, people are noticing. And many that were initially opposed to the idea, or what they thought this was about, are realizing that the reality of what we're doing is actually not what they thought and very much what they want for the island. So I would say that the opposition to the fluff or the erroneous idea of what we were about was high, and it's decreased.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Even the misconception, it's decreased because it's not a political year, it's done. But the understanding of what we're actually doing is increasing, and the appreciation for it is increasing exponentially. So, things have changed quite a bit, and it's a very welcoming environment for us. But the one thing about Rautan, and one of the reasons why we chose Rautan, is because, aside from our project, this is generally a very welcoming place for foreign investment. It's a Caribbean island, speaks mostly English, former British colony, and they live primarily off of tourism. And cruise ships for now, but flying tourists as well. So it's a very welcoming island to foreigners coming, spending money, investing, hiring.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  It's not foreign, if you will, to them. It's just part of their culture.

• 19:13Anthony Pompliano?

  When you see so much receptivity to the cruise ships and kind of that side of the tourism, is there a difference in the receptivity? Like, is it a different group of people on the island who are receptive to this idea of these special economic zones? Or is it just such a smile and that there's only really one group of people?

• 19:32Speaker 02

  It's one group of people, and you know what's interesting? And there's a bit of inside baseball, but in the beginning, before cruise ships started coming, there was massive opposition. Like, you have no idea, protests, fires. It was massive oppositions. And now, if anybody threatens the possibility of a cruise ship docking because of whatever reason, politics, the opposition is against that. The way in which the island has embraced this thing which some groups were adamantly against in the beginning is amazing. Same thing with a special regime that was created called Solitour. It was a tremendous Amount of opposition in the beginning and now it's one of the primary drivers of economic

• 20:13Speaker 02

  activity on the island. I think we're in a similar trajectory, you know, as I said, anything new initially is faced with resistance. And but as you show that you drive benefits, then you're embraced. And on an island of this size, which has less than 100,000 people amongst three core islands. So it's a small population, notwithstanding the fact that the Rhode Island Island itself is one square mile larger than the island of Hong Kong, and we can draw some comparisons later. So if you do things right, you can actually have a substantial impact in in relative terms, you know, having we're almost at 1000 jobs within the jurisdiction that we're responsible for. So in less than a year and a half, we're 1% of the population is benefiting

• 20:57Speaker 02

  directly. And when you look at the immediately surrounding areas, the village closest to us, we have about 20% of that village has a job directly or indirectly, thanks to the jurisdiction. Once you get to those levels of of positive impact, before too long, it becomes anti fragile.

• 21:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Who's funding all this? Like when you think about the amount of capital that ends up getting invested here, like where's that money coming from?

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, our founder group started with personal capital, the early stages of the program. But it's very similar to a startup. So we've done seed rounds, series A rounds, and now series B round. And so it's a distributed network of mostly high net worth individual investors. We do have a few institutional investors who are investing à la venture capital. They know, or in the beginning, now less, less and less, but in the beginning, they know that the risks were frankly unknown, but assume high, but that the benefit of this succeeding financially and otherwise was tremendous. So it's, you know, typical to

• 22:05Speaker 02

  to an early stage startup.

• 22:08Anthony Pompliano?

  And obviously, critics will say like, oh, so wealthy people are funding the creation of new cities. I hate that. That's bad. You know, we can lay out all of their arguments. The other argument is like, well, you need to be able to fund some, you know, the money's got to come from somewhere to be able to fund the creation of something new. How do you kind of think through like, the investor selection, right? Because I think that's probably a surface area where people will naturally gravitate towards, even though, you know, I'm investing in a lot of companies. They do their own thing, right? And sure, I get reports and that type of stuff. But how do you think about investor selection and then their participation maybe also in the projects?

• 22:47Speaker 02

  So to the first point, I mean, generally, it's very wealthy people that make these types of high-risk investments. It's just the way it is. And I think our investors have naturally self-selected based on what we stand for and what we're seeking to create, you know, because the most important thing about what we're doing in the early stages was not how the city looks, right? Or any particular technology that was being advanced other than governance as a technology, right? So there's been self-selection in that regard. And the common thread revolves around two dimensions. One, a strong orientation towards individual liberty and freedom and property rights and everything that comes with markets

• 23:29Speaker 02

  on the one hand. And on the other, a strong alignment to the sense that, you know, the collective well-being of basically humans generally is a good thing to pursue, right? But you can't, you can't do it at the expense of the first, right? In fact, you only do it by advancing the first. But the sense that not only can I get a huge return on my investment, but that this is the most impactful, most important thing that can be done to actually advance humanity on Earth, maybe we'll make it to Mars at some point, but on Earth, it is a strong driver. Now, you know, the nature of being an early-stage venture means that the number of investors, because the amount of capital is also small,

• 24:12Speaker 02

  is small. But as we grow, our model has a number of points at which we essentially spin off mostly the real estate development companies, landholding and what have you, into publicly traded. And obviously, with crypto and tokenization, we're very much in line with that. And so I'm not talking about traditional IPO in an expensive, only when you're big enough sense necessarily. In fact, our first real estate development company, St. John's Bay Development Company, is already having its equity tokenized equity, you know, the tokens are listed in the securitized platform under Citi as the token name. And the idea is that then it becomes ultra democratized. Anybody who wants to own a small share or a big share, whatever they can afford,

• 24:58Speaker 02

  of the underlying most valuable asset that absorbs the value that's being created can be part of it. And, you know, the only exclusionary criteria is that you have to be so far, you know, going through KYC, AML, basically you can't be in any of the international blacklist. You know, it's treated as a US investment because the parent company is a US company and has to go through those levels of compliance.

• 25:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Do you worry about overlaying complexity? Like, obviously, just building the infrastructure is hard. Then there's like the governance innovations that you all are working on. That's hard. Then you have like geopolitics, like that's complex to some degree. And then you add in things like tokenization or capital markets or whatever. Like, there's multiple layers of difficulty here. How do you think, like, do you deal with all of it at once? Do you sequentially say, hey, let's deal with the first risk first? Like, how you kind of evaluate the risks and then approach them?

• 25:54Speaker 02

  I think it's probably similar to how Elon Musk probably thinks about Tesla or SpaceX, I'm not sure. You know, when he was designing the Tesla cars, he was probably not just trying to optimize for just the electric motor, you know. Sometimes when you're trying to do something that's transformative and substantially better, it's not that you're stuck with it, it's that it makes sense to innovate in all the critical dimensions that need innovations because the end product is not a little bit better. It's a transformed product. It's a zero to one to some extent. It's not the same thing better.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  It's a different version of a product that delivers a hell of a lot better service or solution. So I don't think about it in that way. I am cautious about undertaking complexity and innovations that are not necessary. But we don't shy away from doing parts that are critical to the vision just because they haven't been done before or because it could be on the cutting edge of some technology, you know. You know, we're reserved, but it's very risky to not take some risks where it's important to take them. Now, the complexity under the hood is one thing. The complexity in the user experience is a whole nother thing.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  And definitely, the user experience has to be, and we work hard at it being very simple and straightforward. You know, just like when you drive a Tesla, you're driving a car, what the hell, you know what's under the hood, right? It has a, you know, a round steering wheel, a gas pedal, you know? It could have been redesigned, but the interface has to feel very similar.

• 27:38Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think of doing this as a company, you could have done it as a company, you could have done it as a nonprofit, or you could have gone and basically been a consultant working with a government and said, hey, you all have to do this. Why is a company the best vehicle?

• 27:52Speaker 02

  It's very important, although it's a company that's structured in a very unique way, but what's very important is a profit motive. Our observation as to one of the fundamental issues in how governance is traditionally delivered as a service, is that the institution that delivers that does not have a profit motive. That creates all sorts of problems. In our model, you know, Prosper is set up as a socio-economic development company, you know, sorts. And it's designed so that the way in which it generates revenue and profit is derived from generalized prosperity in the jurisdiction that it's managing, in essence, okay? So the profit motive is key. One, and two, it's a capital-intensive undertaking.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  And so if you wanted, as we did, to be able to raise capital, it has to be a company. People have to own a stake, and the profits that will eventually be generated need to be able to result in a return on investment.

• 28:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And so that's how you raise capital, but what about on the other side? Like, why is a for-profit company the best way to actually govern, right? To build the infrastructure and do all that?

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Well, so, maybe, I don't want to get into too much minutia, although I'm happy to go there. You keep asking me however many details as you want. The way this actually works is that the host country, in this case Honduras, and others that we're speaking with, form a form of public-private partnership with our, it's called promoter and organizer company. Okay. So, between the two, there is a special jurisdiction that is formed in essence. That jurisdiction is a public entity. In Honduras is a special economic zone. And it's created legally as a political subdivision of the sovereign state of Honduras. So it's a governmental entity through and through.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  What's unique about it, however, compared to, say, other special economic zones, is the the depth of responsibilities and authorities that it, as a political subdivision of the government of Honduras, has. And that's important because if you want to really deal with the issues at the root and then profoundly create better conditions, you can't just deal with surface stuff. So the jurisdiction has to be empowered to deal with problems at its roots. And the other thing that's unique about it, it's the governance structure that oversees and runs it, if you will, on a day-to-day basis. That latter component is formed, at least in the case of PROSPRA,

• 30:25Speaker 02

  in a, on a board, it's called the council of the of the special economics on the PROSPRA council. And it's like a board of directors, if you will, where the majority of those directors eventually become selected by the residents that have opted into the special jurisdiction. So it complies with international norms of democratic government and representation. But the other part of the board is nominated and appointed by the promoter and organizer. And so you have this interesting balance between a for-profit interest that is looking multiple decades into the future and a resident class that, you know, is essentially selecting people for their most pressing needs immediately.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  And so we've created a strong We believe that brings and combines the best of what both worlds have to offer. A very democratic way of electing representatives and and having them voice your thoughts and all the you know, and all the incentives and structures that go along with that, which is you got to be popular to get elected and all that, combined with a different way of looking at it, which is a business mindset, long term, profit driven, et cetera, et cetera. So in this case, it's the jurisdiction itself is public, but the way in which a lot of the the decisions are made have have a for profit, long term mentality associated with it.

• 31:48Anthony Pompliano?

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• 32:30Anthony Pompliano?

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• 33:11Anthony Pompliano?

  There are no fixed minimums, no ACH transaction fees, and no withdrawal fees. Download the FTX app today and use referral code POMP to earn free crypto on every trade over $10. The more you trade, the more you earn. Go download the FTX app today and use referral code POMP. And so that council, how many people are on it?

• 33:30Speaker 02

  There are nine members of a council.

• 33:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And it's four or five come from the people versus?

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Eventually, five come from the residents. There's a transitional period, you know, because in the beginning, there are no residents, right? So, you know, landowners have some seats in the beginning. The promoter organizer makes a nomination, you know, so there's a mixture.

• 33:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Process. And the idea is that the residents will be picking people who live there? Or they'll be picking people who, you know, I don't know, could they pick Tim Cook, you know, from Apple? Could they pick somebody from the mainland of Honduras to sit on it? Or does it have to be somebody who lives there on National Island?

• 34:12Speaker 02

  They do not have to pick somebody who physically lives there. But in order to be qualified to be selected by the residents, the person has to be at a minimum an E-resident. And obviously have agreed to comply with the charter of the ZEDE of Prospera as well as the Honduran constitution.

• 34:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And what is the E-resident?

• 34:32Speaker 02

  An E-resident basically is a virtual form of residency. It doesn't give you physical access as a permanent resident, but it does for a select number of days. And it's the initial step of opting into the jurisdiction virtually. Okay? You've had to comply, you have to agree to comply with the statutes and the charter. You agree to resolve disputes through either a selected arbitration center on a case by case or through the default mechanisms of the jurisdiction. And ultimately, you agree that anything you do within the jurisdiction is running on the common law code that was created. So there's a whole legal stack that you obtain, you have a form of identification as a member.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  And you've agreed to abide by those rules. It doesn't mean everything in your life, but anything you do within the jurisdiction, when you identify yourself as an E-resident, is running on the Prospera legal stack.

• 35:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Is the legal stack different than in Honduras or America? Like in the sense of are there rules that you all have that we don't have or rules that we have that you don't have?

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Yes and no. So it's important to understand that the ZEDE itself and the norms that it has adopted are considered Honduran laws. Hmm. Basically, the ZEDE was created by the Honduran Congress and the rules that it adopts are Have to fit within the Honduran. Have to fit within the Honduran constitution, one, but once adopted are literally Honduran laws. Now, they only apply within the jurisdiction and/or to those that opt into it, but they are Honduran laws. Hmm. Okay. Now, one of the unique elements of the ZEDE system in Honduras is that it

• 36:18Speaker 02

  wisely observed that common law, Anglo-Saxon common law, seems to be much more effective at driving prosperity because it's more dynamic, more responsive. In a way, it's decentralized law versus centralized law in a Napoleonic sense, you know. So it allows the adoption of common law. And so when Prospera had to create the most base layer of the tax stack for governance, we opted to do a restatement of effectively American common law, which is itself an evolution of British and international common law, but it's best defined in the US through the ALI, American Law Institute. So it's the American common law, international

• 37:01Speaker 02

  common law system as base. It was restated to perfect it, in our opinion, so as to be most protective of private property and to be as fair as possible within our definition of what that means, which starts with individual responsibility and freedom. And so it's different than other parts of Honduras and it's different than in the US, but it's more similar to the US than it is to Honduras outside of the ZEDE.

• 37:30Anthony Pompliano?

  So, uh, laws are great, but they don't matter if people can just go and do whatever they want, right? Like, there's like a decriminalization. We see it with, uh, marijuana in the United States, right? Is there's plenty, many places where marijuana is technically illegal by the letter of the law, uh, but the district attorneys have said, hey, we're just not going to prosecute these people anymore. And so, uh, kind of application versus letter of the law can be very different. Uh, another example is, uh, they may say to, uh, the police in the United States, um, uh, here in, uh, uh, certain parts of Florida, uh, the police are instructed not to chase certain, uh, uh, criminals based on the crime that they committed. So if it's violent crime versus not violent crime, things like that.

• 38:12Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it changes the dynamic of whether people follow the laws or don't. I imagine in a place like this where, uh, it is in its infancy and being built out, uh, if somebody shows up and starts committing crimes, what happens to that person? Is there a police force? Is there a, a court system that they go through? How, how does it work from an application, uh, application standpoint? Not just, you know, hey, these are what the laws are supposed to be followed?

• 38:36Speaker 02

  Yes. I would like to draw a distinction for the way that I'm going to answer that between, let's say, the, the digital sphere, the virtual space, and then the physical space.

• 38:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  Um, and, and the digital transcends into the physical in many ways. But as to rules and laws and words on paper, indeed, they don't matter unless people, unless it can be enforced. So let me talk about enforcement, you know, in one domain versus another. Perhaps the most important domain, although it doesn't seem that way in the short term, is the fact that once you're created as an e-resident on a platform and you agree to abide by those rules, if there's a dispute or if you're a bad actor, you know, your record gets affected. You know, like basically if you're a deadbeat, if you, if you've been invited or asked to go to an arbitration, you just don't show up, that will show up. You know, your e-residency will get canceled and/or the fact that you have outstanding bills and, you know,

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Will be known. Hmm. So there's a reputational component that goes along with it. And if you're a bad actor, you either never got in or you get kicked out. Hmm. So so differently, there's a there's a cost and a benefit to being part of the network. Second thing is that we've created the Prosper Arbitration Center to be compliant with and part of the New York Convention. And that means that if you and I have a dispute, which by default goes to the Prosper Arbitration Center, we can contract out of it, but if we don't say otherwise, that's where we go. And I have been a bad actor and you get an award against me from the PAC, the Prosper Arbitration Center, that is enforceable in pretty much every country around the world that is part of the New York Convention. Hmm.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  So I could be an American, you could be a German, and that award, you can take it to the US and have a local court enforce it. And they're routinely enforced. Hmm. This is nothing new, it's just the way it works. And it's much more expedited. So basically, you get a court order to enforce it, and now then you rely on, say, the local government to seize property or chase a criminal using their police force or whatever. And then that's when you cross into the physical domain, because ultimately, a bad actor that doesn't want to pay or doesn't want to do what is right, at some point, that coercion has to play a role, right? If you want to take it all the way. And at that point, you need to, you know, involve the authorities that control the registries or the police.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  So then, let's cross into the physical domain, and you can be in the US with an internationally recognized arbitral award, or you could be in Prosper, where where obviously, the Prosper Arbitration Center award will be recognized. And so then what happens from that point on? If you have property within the jurisdiction and that's in the registries, the registrars are mandated to react to those court orders, in essence. Likewise, the police or the security forces have to restrain you, get you out of the jurisdiction, or bring you physically to deal with the consequences. It's it's it's very similar with what you would expect in a traditional sense, but the the difference and the innovation revolves around the incentive structure, just like

• 41:40Speaker 02

  driving a Tessa, you know, is very similar, it's a car, we, but the under the hood makes all the difference in the world. Hmm. As to the question of, are there, is there police, is there, well, like, how do you deal with that? Yes, there is, you know, the ZEDE law mandates in Honduras that the ZEDE has its enforcement of laws. And so criminal law is that of Honduras and applies through and through. And then civil law, commercial matters are also dealt with through arbitration and if need be, you know, police can get, can get involved. In our model, we rely very heavily and primarily on what under common law is called self-help, which is if you can peacefully deal with a dispute, as long as you're not disturbing the peace, then do so.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  And that includes, you know, if you're a landlord and your tenant's not paying, you can lock him out, you can turn off the utilities, you know, it has to be reasonable and all that. And, and that's the fuzzy area of common law that actually puts a lot more burden on the individual because it says you gotta be reasonable and, and who decides, an independent third party if it's, it's not prescriptive. So all those mechanisms are in full force within prospering Honduras and it's part of the default package, if you will, that when we set up anywhere else is included.

• 42:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you think of the police, like, that's probably one of the most interesting things to me. Prospera doesn't have a military, right, doesn't have a navy that I know of, doesn't have an air force. Maybe you guys have one secretly underground or something. How do you think about like the actual law enforcement, both internal and external, so defense, from a military standpoint and then internal policing?

• 43:22Speaker 02

  So national defense remains very much an exclusive purview of the countries that we're working with. Prospera is not a country, doesn't seek to be one, doesn't have a military and I don't think needs a military in a traditional sense.

• 43:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Because the military defense will be provided by Honduras.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  Yes, and also because

• 43:45Anthony Pompliano?

  And their allies.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  In a broader sense, a CEO of New Way, I can tell you that the vision of Prospera has always been a transnational network of interconnected Prospera hubs that all of them have the potential and eventually become full-flown cities. And so in that, in that vision, the traditional paradigm of a standing national military doesn't fit. And it's also not as important or necessary because you have other mechanisms of ensuring that your interests are protected, you know, at, at the sort of macro level. Uh, so outside the city walls, if you will, figuratively, not physically. Uh, with regards to internally, yeah, I mean, as I said, the three layers of governance, security is, is one of the most important.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  And ultimately, it's about dealing with bad actors that are not going to just do what the law says to begin with, or the contract, or the arbitral award. So you gotta be prepared to use force defensively. And defensively includes the enforcement of agreements, you know, because it's the guy or the girl that's defrauding the third party, they're the ones that are committing coercion to begin with. Um, so do you want me to go into like the, the specifics of how, how it's set up?

• 44:56Anthony Pompliano?

  So like, uh, another thing would be, let's say that somebody commits like, uh, I, I just jump to the extreme, right? Like violent crime, uh, within the special economics zone, like what happens to them? So if I go and, and I'm a bad person and I like beat up somebody in the special economics zone, right? Do I get arrested? Do I get put in jail? Is the jail in, uh, the special economics zone? Do I go to like Honduran jail? How does that work?

• 45:20Speaker 02

  So in the current form versus long-term vision, the answer is different. Okay. Today, there are no physical jails in, in, in Prospera's jurisdiction in Ratan. Okay. Or the mainland for that matter. Obviously, there are jails in Honduras. Uh, everybody that is in Prospera is a citizen of some country, right? Whether it's Honduras or some other country.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  If you are a Honduran citizen and you commit a violent crime

• 45:50Speaker 02

  in the ZEDE, you not only can be prosecuted, but the ZEDE authorities are instructed to fully cooperate and they will be all too eager to make sure that you face justice.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  And the country of Honduras has a claim because you're a citizen of theirs. If you're a US citizen, on the other hand, then the US, you know, government has a claim. Okay, so the preferred approach is, you know, to send them to where they come from with the evidence and the case and say, this person committed this crime now, you know.

• 46:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Take care of it.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Take care of it, right? So kicking them out in a way, it's the most tangible thing in the short term, having first apprehended, apprehended the person and then handing them to the corresponding authorities. Over time is inevitable and in fact, you know, as an example of Honduras, but I think it's going to be the case in other places as well. You know, you don't want the zone to then just export their criminal, whoever's committing crime outside, you know, as of right now, by law, the jurisdiction in Honduras, the ZEDE, has to pay the authorities to whom they hand them so that they can be incarcerated. You know, so the obligation of providing that service to society falls on the jurisdiction.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Nonetheless, the physical facilities might be outside, but the obligation is within the jurisdiction, so you pay for that service. Over time, I mean, you would like to have a world where nobody goes to jail and that wouldn't that be nice, but you know, in reality, you know, I don't see that being any different. And at some point, the full penitentiary system has to be in place. Again, might look similar on the surface, but then when you think about the incentive structure, it's costly to run a penitentiary system. It's bad business to, you know, be oppressive with your clients, right? So you might have similar tools on the surface, but the driving force for how to implement them is completely different and so they are prosperity enhancing incentives as opposed to.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Population control incentives or whatever other incentives apply.

• 47:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, Balaji Srinivasan recently wrote a book, The Network State. And I've talked with him at length about it. It sounds like you all are implementing parts of that book, right? Although there may be some differences. How do you evaluate kind of that thesis? And like, where do you see overlap and commonality versus differences?

• 48:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I had the opportunity to read an early version of it before it was published because Biology was kind enough to share it. There are some important similarities and then there's some differences. I think it's interesting because often very smart people, as Biology is and others, academics have a way to describe things that are either are already happening or that others do without saying it in the same way. Maybe that make more sense or that have the right sizzle, if you will.

• 48:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  When I first heard of his concept and the way he was putting it together, my immediate reaction is, yeah, of course. I mean, that's kind of what we're working towards. You know, this international network of interconnected city scale prosper hubs. Basically, it's what he's describing, right? I mean, it's a network. There is a layer of governance. They're real human beings, their physical locations, you know? I would say that the the main difference that I perceive so far is that in his model, you can have a single individual in a city effectively be a node of this network state. Okay. And in my understanding of how to deliver the services that Prospera seeks to deliver,

• 49:41Speaker 02

  you can't effectively do that at a too small of a scale. You don't have the economies of scale on the one hand, nor do you have the effectiveness to deliver the service, whether it is security or enforcement, when it's just one individual person in Tokyo or wherever, right? Or 10, you know, it might not make sense to do a small neighborhood. I know that 10,000 people and above definitely makes sense. You know, that's probably as low as I would feel comfortable saying. You know, you can do it as small as sustainably for profit, okay? Not as a collective community, something, you know? There are different models that maybe you can have a community of a thousand and it's like a big HOA. That's not what I'm talking about.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  I'm talking about there's a service provider who's in the business of creating the conditions for people to have what they need to be maximally prosperous and that they seek to make a profit as a result of it. That's what I'm talking about. So there are many similarities. I would say that that's the main one that we would only effectively call a Prosper Hub, a location that's both physically big enough and has the vision to attract at least 10,000 human beings living in a community. Ideally, however, moving more towards the 100,000 strong population.

• 50:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And as you see that play out, like one of the examples that he uses is like a Google employee. They have a badge, they go into a physical office, but there's a network of these offices. You could go from the San Francisco office and travel to the New York office and you may not have a dedicated desk, but like there's open desks and you can still go get the snacks and you use that same badge to get in. Like there's this element of moving in between the locations within the network. Is that the general idea behind what you think will happen with Prosper?

• 51:26Speaker 02

  It's what's already happening with Prosper. So that's where the e-residency comes in. Okay, that's a global, you know, it's in fact inside of a separate tech stack, though it's related. So that, that e-residency is Prosper virtual, if you will. If you're part of that, then you have the base layer of access to anywhere in the world. It's like a WeWork, if you will. Same thing, you might not have a dedicated space, but you are at least a club member. Within, in Honduras alone, there's already five different physical locations. Okay, some bigger than others. Some are as big as 400 acres. The smallest one, it's less than five acres. And it's just in a very strategic location.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  There's an office, a building that's being converted into offices are going to be residences and a few things. So yes, with your Prosper e-residence, you enter in any one of these five hubs. As if you remember WeWork looking for office space.

• 52:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And

• 52:25Anthony Pompliano?

  What are the risks with doing this? Like, when you all sit down, obviously, there's the capital outlay that you have to get through, and you've got to be able to build physical buildings. But like, what are the risks that people may not identify, that you all have identified, that you're working to mitigate?

• 52:39Speaker 02

  You know, there are definitely different types of risks.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  You know, loss of financial resources is there.

• 52:49Speaker 02

  Done right, though, that risk is very low. Okay, so the only way in which you actually lose all of the financial resources is because of, you know, a natural disaster that just destroys the only hub you have up until that point. Because if you've expanded, then you've got diversification. Or you have, you know, expropriation by a host government, you know, something, a bomb, something like that, very, very radical and therefore low probability of happening.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  The risk that I think most people don't even think about or appreciate is the fact that, you know, there's a physical dimension to this, you know, and when you're seeking to create something transformative and something that, whether it's misunderstood or understood from a very specific way, quite literally can be a threat to the most powerful existing institutions in the world. Yeah, I mean, there, you know, people disappear when they threaten powerful networks, right? And interest groups and, and in parts of the world where, where there's no rule of law,

• 54:01Speaker 02

  right, and where you sometimes, people sometimes take matters into their own hands, you know, and you're poking at that bear to some extent, even though it's for good reason and even though it actually lifts everybody up, including the interest groups that, on the surface, fear threaten in the beginning, you know, there's risks that they take different actions. You know, I mean, governments are in the business of force, right? But the cronies that leverage governments to advance their interests are also in the business of force, often through government and often not through government.

• 54:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Have you guys faced that?

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 54:37Anthony Pompliano?

  What, from who?

• 54:39Speaker 02

  You know, not a liberty to talk about it on this open channel, but suffice it to say that the most valuable service that we provide our members is security, but it comes with a big cost.

• 54:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And as you think about that Honduras, Roatan, some people would argue there's big risks, there's violent security, all that type of stuff. There's other places in the world where it could be much worse, right? And for example, if you had a location in Ukraine right now during the middle of a geopolitical conflict, how do you think about having these areas where you may have the service of national defense provided by the host country, if you will, but you may not actually be in control of it? And there's all these like external threats. It's also the sovereignty of nations of which you're operating within. Like, how do you think of almost like the second and third order effect

• 55:36Anthony Pompliano?

  of security that you might not have as much of an impact on?

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Well, I think what I'm comfortable talking about in this open channel is that as a for-profit organization, the best way to deal with that is to have some degree of diversification. So if you have, as opposed to being in just one country or one physical location, you know, if we're successful within my lifetime, we can have, say, 100 of these spread out throughout the globe. Yeah, you got war in Ukraine. Okay, fine. I mean, one answer could be, well, hopefully the Ukrainian army can do a good job, right? The current answer is not, well, Prosper has to have an army and go and send them over there. Instead, because of our incentive structure is so different, it's like, okay, you're in our

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Ukrainian hub, come on over. We're like, we got 10 others that will welcome you with open arms because we want you to remain a productive member of our platform. Why? Because if you're productive, you're paying taxes, you're buying real estate, you know, it goes on and on and on. So our incentive is to then move expeditiously and relocate the human beings and minimize loss of life, loss of property, but in a very business and sensible way. So I mean, that would be, you gotta grow in large enough to some extent to be, I would argue, anti-fragile against those risks, because if you think about it, right now, if you're in a country, and that's, you know, and you're a citizen of that one country,

• 57:02Speaker 02

  and that country goes to war, and let's say it's Russia, then you can get drafted, and, you know, and where, like, where are you gonna go? If you're part of this more networked, distributed state, you know, and they have your back, and, and, and there is the right incentives, then, okay, that particular geography or region of the world might be going down in flames, but then you get distributed wherever your security can be guaranteed.

• 57:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. My mind jumps to the physical security components of this. Obviously, one of the, kind of, maybe less obvious, but still risks, is like the regulatory risk. I told someone that I was gonna talk with you, and they said, "Oh, ask about the changeover in the government in Honduras has led to different perspectives on the special economic zones." And frankly, I Googled for about two minutes, and I got very confused very quickly, because there's all kinds of stuff being written, so I said, "I'm gonna talk to the source. Help me understand what your analysis is of the various administrations, and like, how it seems like it could flip back and forth in terms of the receptivity,

• 58:10Anthony Pompliano?

  and like, what is the impact on the actual business that you try to build, given that this could, you know, it's not a unique thing to Honduras, it'll probably be something you're gonna have to deal with in every single location you go into."

• 58:22Speaker 02

  Sure. I would like to separate the ZED program versus the instantiations of ZEDs, and also the actual ZEDs being created, of which Prosper was the first. What is most susceptible to the pendulum swinging is the program as a whole.

• 58:45Speaker 02

  And in fact, in Honduras, this new administration was against their understanding of it. And it's important to make that distinction as well. The understanding of what it is or was versus the reality of it. They were very much against their understanding of what it was. And indeed, they passed laws to repeal the program. And so, as of right now, no new ZEDs can be created. They killed the program as a whole for the creation of new ZEDs. However, the PROSPRO ZED was already created. And it's like grandfathered, being grandfathered in to some extent. And not just created, but in, on the face of the law itself guaranteed by the Honduran constitution,

• 59:28Speaker 02

  there is at least a 10-year transitional period, no matter what. But in the case of PROSPRO through an international treaty that applies to it, it's actually 50, five zero years of transitional, you know, guaranteed stability of that arrangement. So, while you can, and they did get rid of the program to create new ZEDs, the existence of those that were lawfully created, and I can speak for PROSPRO, is guaranteed for 50 years. Of course, there are people who would like to not see that be the case. You know, radical factions within the government for ideological or other reasons, mostly based on misunderstandings. But even if they fully understand it, there are some people who really don't like what we stand for and what we're trying to do.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  And I won't go into their motivations. But by and large, the Honduran government, the people we speak with, they get that rule of law to some extent really matters. And they can't just override acquired rights. And not just the government, but also the strongest economic groups of the country realize that if they allow one major investment, such as PROSPRO, as in the country.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  To just be overwritten in that regard, then they're next in line. You know, they might think they have nothing to do with Prospera, but the legal foundations upon which Prospera stands are the strongest that any business in Honduras has available to them. And so if those are eroded away, then nothing else matters. And they get that. So I actually feel very good that the the more sensible minds, if you will, in the country are will prevail. You know, I could be proven wrong, but I the evidence I'm seeing so far is very optimistic in that regard. Now, uh, just to close this particular topic about Honduras, and I can tell you more broadly in a global sense, it's not as if there are not um

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  legitimate concerns by groups about what ZED is could have become. Right? And perhaps some imperfections in how the original legal structure was created. I'm not speaking about Prospera specifically necessarily, just the law of the ZED could have been used in manners that would be very counterproductive to, say, national interests. But that does not mean that the way that they were actually created materialized those risks. And in the case of Prospera in particular, none of those risks ever materialized. And the extent to which there is some potential opening for, hey, you know, it could be,

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  then that's where people sitting down, talking about it and resolving the issue is very viable. So knowing what I know about what the concerns are, the realities of our platform, I have no concerns.

• 1:02:16Anthony Pompliano?

  What are the biggest like concerns that they have?

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  For example, like environmental degradation, violation of human rights, uh, violation of national sovereignty, uh, hosting of, you know, criminals, all these all these concerns.

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  You know, it's easy for people to concoct how what a limited understanding of the jurisdiction is could result in a maximization of those. For example, if you understand the level of legal autonomy that the jurisdiction has, you could say, well, they're autonomous to do all sorts of things, therefore, they could do bad things, right? But it's not true. For each of one of those things, for example, when it comes to the environment in Prospera, not only is it already bound by international treaties that protect, you know, all the things that are now protected nationally in Honduras, but there are very strong internal norms about zero tolerance for, say, hurting the coral reef, which is the most precious, you know, natural resource in Rottan.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  When it comes to, say, criminality, you know, the full criminal code of Honduras applies inside. There is full extradition, you know, that still applies. So if you can't be a criminal in Honduras and within Prospera and then not be exposed to international extradition. You know, so I can go on. So those are the main ones that people cite as a fear, but they're not based in facts.

• 1:03:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. So it's basically if I look at what is possible and go to the most extreme potential negative things, the equivalent would be, well, if people can drive cars, then they may hit people that are walking across this, across the crosswalk, and therefore no one should drive a car because they may hit people. And so there's risk reward or trade offs in all of these things. And rational people try to get the most net positive while understanding the risk and trying to mitigate risk along the way.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  For example, that would be a reasonable way to look at it.

• 1:04:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, okay. What's your pitch to people? Why should they move there? Like, is it like, hey, literally come physically move here? Is it become an EU resident? Like, what is the thing that you want people to consider doing? And then maybe what is the difference between like, why should they become an EU resident versus like, go physically move there?

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  Well, there are many reasons, but of course, you can start with an e-residency. But the most impactful part of it is the people that are already moving to do very cool and interesting things. So Rottan as a whole, it's a beautiful destination, you know, blue, transparent waters, white sand. It's a great place to.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  Grow a young family, you know, we've now have an internationally best standard school within the jurisdiction. But ultimately, it's about the process of co-creating, I would say. You know, I think that the pitch is if you want to be part of building the future that we want to see, right, and dealing with the most important layer of what it means to be a civilized society and how you get that. If you want to be part of that, then we're at the very tip of the spear for that, you know, the frontier to some extent. And the cool thing is that you don't have to become an expert in governance per se, because our service to the most pioneering co-creators in the world is to create the

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  environment for them to do what they are either already in pursuit of or would like to be in pursuit of. For instance, if you want to be in the most advanced digital manufacturing technology using robotics with locally sourced natural materials to build beautiful but aesthetically beautiful, functionally advanced and amazing buildings, then you're in Prospera, as is the case right now. You know, our pioneering development called Bayabu has a company started called Circular Factory that is doing exactly that. In fact, there's three robots in the whole Latin America, including Mexico, doing robotics manufacturing of building components. Three in the whole Latin America, including Mexico. Two of them are in raw tan within Prospera, okay?

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  If you are at the cutting edge of financial innovation and you want to, you know, build a bank from scratch, digital, or just run on Bitcoin for everything, then you're in Prospera. You know, Prospera right now has the only ATM, Bitcoin ATM of the Bay Islands. It's the only part of Honduras that has lawfully acknowledged that Bitcoin basically is currency and should not be taxed as a commodity and what have you. And you can pay your taxes using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. So if you are at the cutting edge of finance and you want to leverage everything that crypto has to offer in a lawful way, et cetera, then you come to Prospera. If you're at the cutting edge of healthcare and you want to deal with anti-aging, gene therapy, really pushing the boundaries of what the body can do.

• 1:07:06Speaker 02

  Safely, but you know, not not stuck with paperwork for 20 years, just doing it right. Then you're in Prospero, you know, the most advanced gene therapy company that I know of in the world is operating in Prospero, doing clinical trials and soon next year opening up to the broader market and they're following super high standards of both ethical and safe parameters, but they're in Prospero because that's the environment that caters to them. So if you're in the cutting, oh, and I mentioned the school earlier, that's Guidepost Montessori with Ray Gern, you know, if you believe that education makes the biggest difference for your kids and you don't want to be restrained either by stupid curriculums that indoctrinates them in things that add no value and in fact destroy value and you

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  want them to have a great experience, not suffer that, then you're in Prospero and you're building, you know, the most innovative, most beautiful school that there is in the region. So those are all reasons to be there. Then that's the sort of innovation, cutting edge part of it. But also, if you want to have a low cost way to operate because taxes are very low, because labor is very productive compared to its cost, then you're setting up, you know, perhaps in the industrial park. And, you know, we have people looking at car assemblies, you know, bulletproof car assemblies, you know, you're looking at pharmaceuticals, you're looking at BPOs and your competitive edge there is actually a cost advantage. It's

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  not that it's the most innovative business model, but you can execute your business model with the lowest amount of cost on the edge that really make a difference pennies on the dollar.

• 1:08:39Anthony Pompliano?

  When you see this and these companies come, what's the biggest surprise that they have? Is it the cost of labor? Is it the ease of operating within the special economic zone? Like, what are they surprised by?

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  That we're real and it's actually happening? I mean, honestly, that's the biggest thing that people tell me. You know, yeah, I read about this. I've heard about the idea broadly. A bunch of groups are talking about it, but like it's, I see the buildings coming up and my goodness, you know, like they're like, within the week I was here, another floor went up. The biggest surprise is that it's actually physical, it's happening, it's beautiful, but it's real. And then within the realness, of course, it's like, oh, got it. So I get the decentralized regulatory model you have. It's easy to comply with fairly low cost in terms of taxes and everything. So, but that is.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  It's hard to explain it, that that doesn't matter as much compared to the fact that it's real, from a surprising perspective.

• 1:09:37Anthony Pompliano?

  So, there's a lot of people who are gonna listen and watch this, and they're gonna be like, "This is bullshit," right? Like, the whole, like, "Is it real? Is it not real?" Whatever. What are like one or two, either anecdotes or data points that you can point to that show progress has been made so far? Right? Is it number of buildings, people who have moved there? Like, how do you think about, "This is a data point that is showing we're headed in the right direction?"

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  For me, the most important metrics is the number of co-creators engaged in building our vision. Okay? And we're about to hit 15. And it seems like a small number, like 15, not even 100, right? I mean, and I would say 10 really are the ones that are really pushing shoulder to shoulder with us. But for each one of these co-creators, what is happening is that they are pushing on the edge of something that is meaningful, makes a difference, could not have otherwise happened in that way, was it not because of Prosper? And them succeeding is something important being solved. Like, I mentioned the Circular Factory, for example. I mean, and this involves Saadid Architects from London.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  They've been at the vision that they're now being able to realize in Prosper for 20 years before we started talking. 20 years! One of the leading architectural firms in the world with technology, with resources, basically could do anything, anywhere in the world in terms of projects. And it took Prosper for them to start to actually realize, in physical reality, the project that is available when you see it on our websites. And when you see it, you say, "Why? I mean, it seems like, it's okay, it's a nice, good-looking building." But when you scratch under the surface, and again, it's about what's under the hood, and you realize that there is a full technology stack that goes from democratized social sales so as to create communities from online to on-land, right?

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  And that the facilities that are created in a virtual environment can be clicked and then built through robotic technology that that is sustainable and circular and you say, okay, you know what? That's pretty damn cool. So what I would say to people that that that just come and visit, you know, check it out. I mean, the website is is a website. Come and you know, Raw Town is an amazing place. You can get to there directly from Miami every day. There are direct daily flights, Miami, Raw Town and back also from Houston. And then there are other cities during the high season, but come stay. We have a hotel, a beautiful resort. You got a golf course, you got a beach club. You know, there are villas. Come stay, visit, and then, you know, you make up your own mind.

• 1:12:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it it's a it's a pretty good, strong pitch. Where can we send people to find more about Prosper? If they say, hey, this sounds interesting. I just want to learn about it. What's the website?

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Sure. Well, I mean, prosper.hn is the the public website. Can hit me up on Twitter under at Eric Brimen as well. I still have I have a low enough volume of direct messages that I do read them. And so you can hit me up there. And yeah, those are those will be the two best places.

• 1:12:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. I really appreciate this. This is it's fascinating to kind of think through. And I think as more and more people within the United States and internationally think about where they live, the pros, the cons, the political climate, the governance, security, many of those different factors. It feels like you all are on the tip of the spear of this idea of like, well, what if we just build from scratch somewhere new? And I think it'll be fascinating to kind of watch this play out over over the coming years. So I'm excited for you guys. And I appreciate your time today to to help explain it.

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  Thank you. And if you don't mind, let me just say something that that I hopefully helps position this part of the world and Raw Town in particular in people's minds. You know, the GNC in the Mediterranean used to be a place where where, you know, the the most advance of human innovation, you know, in governance technology was taking place. And obviously, you had the Roman Empire and, you know, things were happening there. The way I see the world, so things have shifted ever more towards the West, right? Part of Western culture and all that. And I don't know, maybe, maybe, maybe the Roman Empire is not where it used to be. Maybe it's more like where we're sitting right now. And instead of the GNC, maybe it's about the Caribbean Sea.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  Because if you look at both the geopolitical realities around that part of the world, as well as the geographical realities around that area of the world, where you can, if you were to imagine a perfect place that is close to the major hubs of economic activity, talent and capital, yet is very distributed, lots of relatively, you know, small places where you can make a big difference. I would say that place in the world today is in the Caribbean Sea. And then beyond that, I would say further that Roatan is a very, very unique, very, very special place in the world. And through a series of historical accidents perhaps, and very unique people that have become involved, is extremely well positioned to be no less than the Hong Kong of the Americas. I mean, it even has a similar size.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  The topography is similar, the, the, the climate is similar, but the, the, the physical location, obviously the legal realities, the history, it's a former British colony, it's near a mainland that is in desperate need of catalyzing a huge economy, because it has the capacity. And the geopolitics today of nearshoring and bringing all that, which, you know, has been on the mainland of China to the Western Hemisphere, where Roatan is quite literally across no more than 40 miles of distance, where you can take a 15 to 20 minute passenger drone flight back and forth, centering yourself in the emerging center for crypto finance in the world, with a mainland population and geographical location

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  that gives it a great advantage for nearshoring. I mean, it's like we're replicating Hong Kong to Shenzhen in our times with the most modern technologies available made possible thanks to the prosperous regulatory and legal environment. Really exciting times. I hope, thank you very much for having me. You obviously have a great following and people that I think by and large see the world in a similar way, sort of unrestrained by the paradigms that exist and that want to do things new, not just because they're different than you, but because we know deep down inside that it can be a hell of a lot better. Right? We know that even in our case, when we live in this, we're Miami, what an amazing place to live in. But we know that there's a bunch of artificial limitations here that keep us and a group of us

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  from getting to where we want to get. And you know, Prosper in Rhode Island is a place where you go to be unshackled from all that. And in the process, help create something truly transformative that will shape our world.

• 1:16:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's pretty cool. I appreciate the time today.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:16:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to transition into a brand new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to thecryptoacademy.io. My team and I have been working with the top HR teams in the industry to develop an intensive three-week training program with over 50 live events. We teach you exactly what you need to know to break into the industry, including live interview prep and resume review. Our students have been hired at over 75 of the world's best Bitcoin and crypto companies. Go to thecryptoacademy.io to learn more. Again, that's thecryptoacademy.io. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with your friends and I'll see you all for the next episode.