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- Crypto, Network States, and Climate Change Data: Trump's Greenland Obsession Explained
Crypto, Network States, and Climate Change Data: Trump's Greenland Obsession Explained
Several of those in Trump's orbit see Greenland as the ground zero for a new kind of nation
Trump is talking about Greenland again, with language that is even more aggressive than he’s used in the past.
(NOTE: The Mark he refers to in this video is Mark Rutte, the Secretary-General of NATO, not Marc Andreessen, whom we’ll discuss in this story.)
Greenland itself is not a sovereign nation, being an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. Denmark is a U.S. ally and NATO partner (for as long as that matters anyway) and is definitely not for sale.
That didn’t stop a man named Dryden Brown from attempting to purchase it.
“I went to Greenland to try to buy it” Brown wrote in a post to X in mid-November 2024 (which I refuse to link to for obvious reasons), as he discussed his plan: use the land to create what he deemed a “prototype” of Terminus, Elon Musk’s proposed first city on Mars.
Denmark was not amused.
“Greenlandic independence requires approval by the Danish parliament and a change of our constitution,” wrote Rasmus Jarlov on X. “I can guarantee you that there is no way we would approve independence so that you could buy Greenland.”
Rebuffed but not defeated, the idea of the U.S. taking ownership of Greenland got pushed up the MAGA chain to the big man himself.
Trump had mentioned buying Greenland during his first term in office, but it never seemed rooted in anything serious. It was brushed aside and forgotten.
Now, we have him reiterating it during questioning alongside the Secretary General of NATO, and Trump indicating he expects NATO to assist him in the effort.
I’ve written before about the techbros swarming around Trump who want to balkanize the entire world and create Network States, essentially libertarian fiefdoms run by corporations and funded by crypto. Dryden Brown is one of them.
He and co-founder Charlie Callinan run a company called Praxis, a startup with one goal: create a Network State and prove its validity. Not to those who live there, but to others with money who could repeat the process and own their own little slice of libertarian utopia.
Praxis is backed by Peter Theil, recently raised $525 million, and has the eyes and ears of Balaji Srinivasan, who coined the phrase “Network State”. Marc Andreessen, who advises DOGE and is close with both Theil and Musk, has also praised the concept.
The economy of Praxis would be crypto-based, something Trump has touted extensively throughout the election and since he’s taken office. Supporters like Brown and Andreessen want a proving ground where they can validate crypto as a reserve currency and convince the world to replace the dollar standard with a Bitcoin standard.
Brown has not kept his vision solely on Greenland. He’s traveled all over the world trying to find a country that will allow him to buy land and create his vision.
Brown wants the potential Greenland city to be a bastion of technological experimentation, specifically drawing on the community of young male hardtech founders that have gathered in El Segundo. Imagine, he said, a city that can create rain on demand using Rainmaker technology, a cloud-seeding startup, or a community powered by nuclear technology from Valar Atomics.
You’d think convincing Praxis members to move to a desolate, freezing country, rather than, say, the Dominican Republic, would be a tough sell. Brown insisted it’s the opposite. “That is the thing about Praxis members,” he said. “A bunch of people that actually would move to Greenland because it’s hardcore.”
Trump is not attempting to gain control of Greenland for some benevolent cause to further humanity. He’s more interested in its resources, which he believes will benefit the United States, especially during the trade war he’s created.
Greenland also has several “canary in the coalmine” aspects that are like Earth’s barometer for the current state of climate change and how bad human activity is affecting the systems that keep us all alive. Controlling the territory means controlling the information:
Greenland also serves as the engine and on/off switch for a key ocean current that influences Earth’s climate in many ways, including hurricane and winter storm activity. It’s called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, and it’s slowing down because more fresh water is being dumped into the ocean by melting ice in Greenland, Serreze said.
A shutdown of the AMOC conveyor belt is a much-feared climate tipping point that could plunge Europe and parts of North America into prolonged freezes, a scenario depicted in the 2004 movie “The Day After Tomorrow.”
“If this global current system were to slow substantially or even collapse altogether — as we know it has done in the past — normal temperature and precipitation patterns around the globe would change drastically,” said climate scientist Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center. “Agriculture would be derailed, ecosystems would crash, and ‘normal’ weather would be a thing of the past.”
By keeping that data to themselves, the Trump Regime can gain an advantage, especially financially, as climate change has adverse effects on people and economies.
Trump is being influenced by libertarian oligarchs who see Greenland as the perfect place to prove the validity of their Network State crypto utopia plans and keep the world from accessing vital climate change data.
It’s a win-win for the techbros.