For that reason, blockchain—banal, technical, deeply unsexy—has become an ideological rallying point, especially among those looking to subvert the reigning order. From Catalonia to Venezuela, dissenting groups have at times wondered whether, their options for a political uncoupling exhausted, they could settle for a digital one instead. Roodt, however, imagines something more diffuse. With the right tech platform, he says, like-minded people could be linked together, regardless of national identity. Individual rights would remain inviolable; if one network was no longer to your liking, you could simply ditch it for a new one. Your economic community might have nothing to do with physical geography. Commerce would continue, with state-backed currencies swapped for crypto alternatives that float freely on an open market. SUBSCRIBE to WIRED and stay smart with more of your favorite writers. After polishing off a skewer of lamb, Roodt invites me into his living room, a cavernous space dominated by chiaroscuro paintings of doll-like children in pastoral scenes. One wall holds a fish tank stocked with cichlids from Lake Tanganyika. (He likes cichlids, he says, because they evolve quickly to fill every competitive niche.) Roodt wants me to see a 100-trillion-dollar bill from Zimbabwe issued in 2009, during the peak of that country’s hyperinflation crisis. Part of what triggered Zimbabwe’s financial collapse was the state’s seizure of white-owned farms, which makes it a potent touchstone among some white South Africans, who make up less than a tenth of the population but control nearly three-quarters of private farmland. Should the South African rand head in the same direction as the Zimbabwe dollar, Roodt says, the blockchain’s tamper-proof record of ownership and commerce could provide protection from such a “predatory state.” Roodt’s idea isn’t as crazy as it might seem—at least if South Africa’s interest in cryptocurrency is any measure. When I first met him, in late 2017, his country was in the midst of a crypto bonanza. South Africans Googled “Bitcoin” more than any other people in the world. On the drive up to Roodt’s estate, I passed Vegas-style billboards advertising a Bitcoin lottery, and the hosts of radio advice shows were telling listeners that their kids wanted crypto for Christmas. South Africa, in other words, may be uniquely primed for Roodt’s blockchain-based revolution. And here, he explains, people are seeking not just riches but alternatives. The most unequal country in the world, South Africa is already home to barricaded islands of wealth no different from his own estate, Roodt notes; a state-proof economic system that connects those islands is inevitable. “The rest of South Africa is not going to do very well, I’m afraid,” he says. (Not long after the braai, he would appear as the rock star headliner at a conference called Blockchain for Beginners, where he proclaimed, to the thunderous applause of a nearly all-white audience, “I don’t think the bureaucrats and politicians realize the shit storm that’s about to hit them.”) Roodt and a few other Afrikaner movers and shakers had already settled on a location for a proof of concept. It was a town called Orania, which sits on the edge of the Great Karoo, the vast stretch of scrubby quasi-desert that dominates the South African interior. Orania was established in 1991 by a band of Afrikaner right-wingers, including the widow of Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid. The settlers purchased an abandoned dam workers’ town on a bend in the Orange River, hoping to plant the seed of an independent Afrikaner state, or Volkstaat. Orania is managed as a private company, and the town council retains a tight grip on who can move in. Each prospective resident is carefully screened—not by race, the council claims, but by avowed devotion to Afrikaner culture. Either way, the end result is the same: All of the town’s 1,500 or so residents are white. “The perception is that it’s a frightening, conservative, in-the-sticks sort of place,” Roodt admits, and says there were accusations that he was “getting in bed with a bunch of racists.” But he maintains that his interest in Orania is purely academic—that the little town is the closest thing an economist can get to a petri dish, a big economy in miniature where the effects of digital money can be studied. For one thing, it already has its own paper note, the ora, which is issued by the local community bank. (Each ora is backed by one rand.) What better place to beta-test the future of digital feudalism?
A group of South Africans are set to introduce blockchain technology to build a community free from government interference. Backers suggest such technology can free bank accounts from regulators and take over some government work. South African economist and media pundit David Roodman has proposed the idea in an article for The Guardian.