Liberty in Our Lifetime

Nicole Reese has been studying, living in, and obsessing about regenerative villages for 5 years. Educated as an anthropologist, she has a professional background in graphic design, marketing, and event production working for TEDx Talks and WELabs.  

 Nicole worked for her local government in native plant and wildlife habitat restoration and green waste management in the Long Beach Office of Sustainability, before leaving California to live in ecovillages in Costa Rica and Mexico. 

 In 2021 she founded Terrenity, an educational organization to support ecovillage seekers and builders. This project became an official collaborator of the Global Ecovillage Network. Terrenity evolved into a nonprofit model to support emerging ecovillages in Guyana and Uganda, while Nicole merged its venture projects with Regen Tribe as co-founder and COO. She now leads projects in regenerative community education and design, and collaborates on regenerative land development in Mexico and abroad. She will be taking part in the conference’s Intentional Communities Panel.

Tatiana Butanka is an advocate for freedom and an active member of Montelibero, an intentional community in the city of Bar, Montenegro. She led the organization of the first Montenegro Libertarian Festival, which took place in September of 2023 and brought together individuals interested in exploring the principles of liberty. 

 Tatiana is also a landowner in MTL City, a libertarian settlement for members of Montelibero. Her interests include self-sustainability and permaculture. She holds an MS degree in history and has a career in the IT sector. 

 Her talk conference talk is entitled “Montelibero: From Safe Haven to Beacon of Freedom” 

Aleks is an entrepreneur, author, and podcaster. After spending thirteen years working in the startup scene, Aleks now spends the bulk of his time researching ways Bitcoin will impact the world sociologically, economically, politically, and culturally.

Aleks’ talk at Liberty in Our Lifetime is entitled “Mises Immortalized: How AI can be used for Freedom.

To find out more about Aleks visit his website.

Pavol Luptak is a cryptoanarchist and technology hacker. In 2007, he founded Nethemba, an IT security company specializing in ethical hacking, and later co-founded Hacktrophy. Pavel is renowned for public security projects, including cracking Mifare Classic cards and hacking public transport systems.

 Passionate about hacking, Pavol co-founded Progressbar hackerspace and organized international cryptoanarchist conferences at Parallel Polis in Prague. Beyond technology, he’s an avid contemporary art enthusiast, joining the renowned Czech group Ztohoven and co-founding the digital art company Satori with a friend.

 Pavol’s vision led him to opt out of the traditional system, giving up permanent residency, adopting cryptocurrencies, and embracing global services. His Liberty in Our Lifetime talk is titled “The Global Opportunist’s Handbook.”

Danilo is a psychologist and lawful agorist. He helps individuals and businesses to find international solutions to break their chains and legally become ungovernable. His talk, “A Roadmap for Freedom: Practical Applications of Flag Theory”, will explore real world case studies of people who have had their lives transformed for the better by jurisdictional arbitrage.

Knut Svanholm is a Bitcoin author, educator, and armchair philosopher. His first book, Bitcoin: Sovereignty through mathematics, is considered to be one of the classics in the space and is a recommended read on the subject on many educational sites, including MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin site hope.com. He is also known for coining the meme (and penning the book) “Everything divided by 21 million”.

Knut is a pure voluntarist and sees Free Cities as a practical means of supporting human progress by implementing Austrian principles in real-world societies.

Dušan is a Bitcoin teacher, miner and one of Slovakia’s leading educators in the field of cryptocurrencies.

A former maths tutor and an international facilitator, he helps people understand Bitcoin so they can protect their wealth from inflation and the decisions of banks and governments. He is committed to teaching the basics – as well as the more technical or social aspects of Bitcoin – to anyone who is searching for more freedom, financial security and privacy.

He is currently building a Bitcoin Education Center on Roatán in Honduras that will be mostly financed from his bitcoin mining activities in Paraguay.

Find out more

Follow on Twitter or visit his personal website.

Jeremy Kauffman is a former executive director and current board member of the Free State Project. He’s also the inventor and founder of the LBRY protocol, as well as other software startups. A father of four, he resides with his wife Rachel in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Jeremy’s talk will be “Doing What Must Be Done: How New Hampshire Is Creating a Libertarian Order.” The Free State Project has facilitated around 10,000 libertarians from around the world to opt-in to freedom in New Hampshire (and it’s still early!). By being active, engaged community members, getting involved in politics and business, Free Staters are increasing ascending New Hampshire power structures. A look at how the Free State movement got here, why we’re winning, and where we go next.

Sebastian Brunemeier is General Partner at Healthspan Capital, a longevity biotech (“LongBio”) venture fund. He is also CEO of ImmuneAGE Bio, focused on immune rejuvenation. He is an investor and serial founder in the LongBio field, previously co-Founder and CIO at Cambrian Biopharma, Founder and COO of Samsara Therapeutics, and Principal at Apollo Health Ventures. He was a PhD dropout in biochemistry at the University of Oxford, holds an MSc in Molecular Neuroscience from the University of Amsterdam.

Sebastian’s talk will be entitled “Longevity biotech: Seeking friendlier biomedical research jurisdictions”. He will make the case that, despite exponentially rising R&D expenditures, the current medical paradigm is not delivering medical advancement efficiently, partially due to a focus on symptom palliation versus targeting the biology of aging itself. He will argue that the FDA, EMA, and other regulators create costly barriers to clinical research, and that new jurisdictions could facilitate a faster pace of progress in the field of longevity biotech (“LongBio”).

Chad Elwartowski is a computer programmer, early Bitcoin adopter and seasteader. In 2018, he transitioned from software development to seasteading, pioneering sustainable floating structures on the open ocean. As the “first seasteader,” he lived on the world’s inaugural seastead and later co-founded Ocean Builders to advance ocean-based construction. After taking a break to start a family, Chad returned as the president of Ocean Builders in 2023, leading the company alongside CEO Grant Romundt to expand its sustainable ocean technology globally. 

Gabriel is the Co-Founder and Development Director of Honduras Próspera Inc: a semi-autonomous economic zone on the island of Roatan, Honduras. Próspera’s policies are designed to attract foreign investment, increase employment opportunities, and alleviate poverty. Gabriel is also the President of Ubiquo, a B2C communications platform operating in Central America. He has been a member of the Trustees Committee of the Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala since 2010. In that role he helps to maintain the university founder’s focus on upholding the ideas of classical liberalism. 

Mikkel Thorup is a world-renowned expat consultant, specializing in tax mitigation, second residencies, and foreign investments. He is the founder and CEO of Expat Money, hosts the popular The Expat Money Show podcast, and is a bestselling author. With over two decades of experience and a vast knowledge base, Mikkel has helped hundreds of clients secure new lives abroad. He is also a co-founder of the Expat International School of Freedom & Entrepreneurship and participates in a variety of philanthropic endeavors. Mikkel offers valuable resources through his daily email correspondence. 

Jon is the founder of Small Farm Cities Africa, a developer of agribusiness enterprises, municipal infrastructure, and applied technology systems. He also serves as Senior Advisor for Africa for the Charter Cities Institute. Previously, he was executive director of E-Commerce Africa at Dubai Ports World. Jon has organized infrastructure, agribusiness, and e-commerce initiatives in Ghana, Nigeria, Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Malawi. Jon has co-authored a book with Dubai multimodal transport pioneer, Issa Baluch, entitled, Africa Risk Dashboard (www.riskdashboard.org), and has been a visiting scholar for African urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Small Farm Cities Africa: Building Affordable Planned Communities

Most Africans are engaged in the agricultural sector and are trapped in economic systems that are informal and therefore unbankable. As an informal sector, private property rights are not recognized, making it impossible for African farmers to store and transfer the value they create, and making it impossible for commercial lenders and investor to finance the sector. Small Farm Cities Africa is solving this problem by building bankable assets, blending affordable housing with greenhouse horticulture, fish farming, and value-added services.

Dr. Mark Lutter is founder and CEO of Braavos Cities, a charter city development company. He is also the founder and Chairman of the Charter Cities Institute, a non-profit building the ecosystem for charter cities. He has a PhD in economics from George Mason University where his research focused on charter cities. Prior to launching the Institute, he was Lead Economist for NeWAY Capital, an asset management firm which made early stage investments in charter cities. He has been published in several newspapers and magazines including The Chicago Tribune, City Journal, the New Yorker, CityAM, and Cato Unbound. His talk at Liberty in Our Lifetime 2023 will be entitled “Choice, Not Exit”. 

Natalie is the Free Cities Foundation’s administrative assistant and a well known proponent of liberty. At Liberty in Our Lifetime Natalie will be chairing a panel discussion on intentional communities featuring projects including Free Commune, Coral Beach Village and Bürgergenossenschaft Mittelsachsen.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Natalie worked for liberty-focused non-profit think tanks. She is a mother of three and sees Free Cities as a means of ensuring freedom for the next generation.

Find out more
Follow Natalie on Twitter

Marnix van Suylekom likes freedom and beauty. Between draining mosquito infested swamps in the Caribbean and building residential structures in the rainforest, he has over 10 years of experience in design, construction and engineering. Marnix started the Free Commune project during the early Covid madness as a plan B to live in a normal, free and respectful environment.

As part of leading the Free Commune project he moved to Galicia, Spain with his wife Yani and their two free range kids.

Finding Freedom as a Modern Pioneer

Are you based in Europe and seeking freedom in an unfree world? Would you like to avoid travelling to the other side of the globe or spending a fortune? Free Commune provides an opportunity for you to do this closer to home. Parts of Europe are depopulating. Fewer people equals less government equals more freedom. Free Commune is an exciting development in an abandoned village in Galicia. One of the most beautiful, overlooked regions of Europe. It offers freedom, independence and real community within your lifetime.

Find out more
Visit Free Commune’s official website.

Niko Laamanen is an educator and founder of Konsensus Network, the first bitcoin only publishing house. By working through a distributed network of volunteers, Konsensus aims to adopt the anti-fragile properties of a starfish as a means of avoiding censorship. For this reason, it classifies itself as a “starfish enterprise”. Konsensus translates and publishes the best books about liberty, economics and bitcoin.

Konsensus Network’s unique model is allowing it to grow rapidly into an international educational collective, working in 20 languages and with over 50 volunteers. The model supports global cooperation through self-governance, reputational capitalism and leadership via example.

Niko is the author of Wielding Bitcoin, a book about harnessing the liberating power of what he regards as the greatest weapon of mass creation. He is currently based in Madeira, working to support the island’s autonomy through economics and bitcoin education.

Vit received his degrees from the University of Economics, Prague and the CEVRO Institute. He has conducted hundreds of interviews for mainstream media such as The New York Times Magazine and Fox Business Network. He has also been a speaker at dozens of conferences including Horasis Global Meeting, TedX, ALEC meeting and the St. Gallen Symposium. His vision and mission is to build a country – Liberland – where honest people can prosper without being oppressed by the government with unnecessary regulations and taxes.

Liberland is undergoing radical transformation from a centralized libertarian state to a Decentralized Autonomous Government. Liberland’s mission is to combine the latest blockchain governance technology with the ideas of limited government. Vit will take part in a session entitled “Liberland Challenged” that will address concerns about Liberland’s past and future.

Find out more

Visit Liberland’s official website.

Baixu supports the work of the Foundation by creating videos that explain our core ideas. She is a licensed architect in the UK and Germany with architecture degrees from the universities of Cambridge, Bath and University College London. Baixu sees Free Cities as a means to unleash the creative power of architects by allowing them to build more mixed-use, human-scale urban spaces where thriving communities can develop.

Joyce Brand is a writer, editor, film & video editor, and accounting consultant who is dedicated to promoting special jurisdictions for peace, prosperity, and better governance.

She is co-author of the book Economics and the Spiritual Life of Free Men, and the intellectual heir of philosophers Spencer Heath and Spencer Heath MacCallum.

She lives in the ZEDE Ciudad Morazán in Honduras, a prototype Free City based on the ideas of the two Spencers.

Zuzana is the Free Cities Foundation’s marketing manager, leading on communication across the Foundation’s social media platforms. She will be one of the conference MCs.

Joe Quirk is President of The Seasteading Institute and co-founder of Blue Frontiers. He is also a science writer, novelist, and memoir ghostwriter, having published national bestsellers in each category. He is co-author with Patri Friedman of Seasteading: an Amazon bestseller in the category of marine engineering. Joe is leading a team of lawyers, engineers, business leaders, artists, and investors to establish the first floating community which promises residents unprecedented political autonomy.

 Find out more

Follow the links to find out more about The Seasteading Institute, Blue Frontiers and follow Joe on Twitter.

Massimo Mazzone

Massimo is the founder of Ciudad Morazán: a ZEDE on the outskirts of Choloma that focusses on providing a safe and pleasant living environment for Honduran blue-collar workers. Massimo is also president of 3C, a Latin American conglomerate that focusses on pharmaceutical retail and wholesaling. Prior to founding CCC Massimo spent his career working in the telecoms industry and management consulting. In his talk he will give an overview of progress made to date on developing Ciudad Morazán.

Find out more

Follow Massimo on Twitter. Follow the links to find out more about Ciudad Morazán and 3C.

Dr Andreas Baumgartner is a co-founder of The Metis Institute and affiliated with EZDA (Economic Zones Development Alliance). He is a board member of TIPOLIS Pte Ltd and senior advisor to PRAXIS as well as involved in multiple other special economic zone/autonomous city and large-scale economic development projects.

Andreas is passionate about economic and social development, having operated at the crossroads of business, politics and law for 25 years. He is inspired by meeting and working with people, building bridges and achieving sustainable impact. He strongly believes in individual freedom, which necessarily comes hand-in-glove with responsibility.

Andreas holds two PhDs (in Law, and in Economic and Social Sciences), in conjunction with four Master degrees. He is married and the proud father of three children.

Swen Lorenz ran a successful global campaign to bring new residents to Sark, a self-governing Crown Dependency that is part of the Channel Islands. Sark has just 500 residents and is widely regarded as “the Jewel of the Channel Islands”. He is also a director of the newly formed Sark Property Company, which is planning to bring significant investment to the island and facilitate the creation of a multi-generational island development plan.