The Sunday Times Magazine • 19of San Juan, where many of the wealthiest
new migrants have congregated. Jake Paul
recently caused outrage by posting a video
of himself apparently driving across a beach
that was protected for turtle nesting.
“There’s a sense of invincibility that
some of these big personalities have,”
Arteaga says. “Logan Paul having his ass out
on some beautiful part of Puerto Rico?
Seriously, not cool.”
Some Puerto Ricans have undoubtedly
benefited from the crypto influx. Julio
Domenech, 24, was working in a job
collecting business cards at bars for an IT
firm when Gmoney encouraged him to start
investing in crypto. Now he’s a “millionaire”
and recently returned from a crypto
conference in Dubai. “It’s honestly like a
dream,” Domenech says. “Crypto changed
my life completely. We’re empowered, man.
Locals are getting involved too.”
Not all locals, though. Some find
considerable irony in the fact that a group
of people who have made their wealth from
one of the most energy-intensive activities
in the world, cryptocurrency, are now
moving to a territory plagued by power
shortages. Bitcoin isn’t exactly in general
use on the island.
“The disparity is just brutal,” Toro says.
“I still have power cuts once a week. If you
really want to contribute to a country you
can’t just sign a cheque, which is what most
of them do. They are coming here to benefit
from this treasure, this land we have. But if
the benefits dry up, how many will stay?”
As it stands, tax migrants have to spend
183 days a year on the island and make it
their clear permanent residence. My sense
of the Puerto Rico influx is that, beyond a
core of true believers, many of the crypto
investors and other tax migrants are there
for an adventure, don’t seem enormously
invested in the long-term future of the
island and will need sustained incentives toremain more than a few years. Otherwise
many of these digital nomads could, in due
course, take their money elsewhere.
Keys says he now considers himself
Puerto Rican. “I’ve had a positive impact
here,” he says. “I donate more than any
Puerto Rican has donated. The only thing
that would change the situation is if the
government repealed the [tax incentive] act.”
It is the wealthy migrants then, with their
willingness to leave, who hold the real power.
Keys’s company, Darma Capital, a digital
asset risk management firm, is a central
player in Puerto Rico’s burgeoning
decentralised finance, or “DeFi”, scene. If the
Web3 revolution truly takes off and a new
digital economy is created, it might end up
looking a lot like the current set-up in Puerto
Rico. Bid farewell then to the hulking
behemoths of Silicon Valley, with their
mega-campuses and corporate vastness;this new economy is small-batch and
hyper-mobile, full of eight or nine-person
businesses and continual innovation. “The
world of campuses and huge tech giants,
that world’s not going to last,” Keys says.
“Though it will probably have a long tail.”
Don’t expect Silicon Valley to give up
without a fight. Big Californian money is
now pouring into blockchain investments.
Marc Andreessen, the pioneering tech
investor, is raising in excess of $4.5 billion to
invest in blockchain technologies, though
some Web3 die-hards are sceptical about
taking his cash. Meanwhile Zuckerberg has
rebranded Facebook as Meta and says it will
be a metaverse-focused company from here
on. Microsoft is ploughing tens of billions
into gaming technology, hoping to provide
an all-encompassing gaming platform that
will rule the metaverse.
“The big battle now is between centralised
and decentralised,” says AJ Banon, vice-
president of growth at Serotonin. “These
powerful companies are going to fight
back.” If Zuckerberg and friends have their
way the new internet may look different to
the old one, but the same people will be
profiting from it via many of the same
corporate structures.
The battle lines are drawn, then. Large
vested interests and feisty but increasingly
wealthy small investors will fight for control
of our digital future. In the meantime the
rest of us resemble the citizens of Puerto
Rico, watching on with wide eyes, some
enthusiastic, others horrified, many just
plain confused, waiting to see who emerges
victorious and what kind of world-changing
technology will prevail.
It’s not clear to me that many of us need
or want any of these new ideas being
pushed on society by a determined
minority. But the rewards are so lucrative
and the momentum so strong, it seems
ERIKA P RODRIGUEZ FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE likely we’re going to get them anyway n
Julio Domenech, 24, is one of the
Puerto Rico locals to have got rich
from the crypto influxHOW TO SPEAK CRYPTO
WEB
The purported next phase
of the internet. Built using
blockchain technology, it will
be more collaborative, taking
power out of the hands of
Silicon Valley and giving it
back to the people. Or so its
proponents claim.BLOCKCHAIN
In essence a digital ledger
of transactions that is
distributed across any
computer on its network.
A blockchain is maintainedby its many users, not a
government or corporation.METAVERSE
A shared virtual
environment. You, or your
hunky 3D avatar, could shop,
socialise, play sport or
even work in the metaverse.
Still in its early stages.CRYPTOCURRENCY
A digital or virtual currency
that lives on the blockchain.
Secured by cryptography, it
is difficult to counterfeit anddoesn’t need the backing of a
government or central bank.CRYPTOPIAN
Someone who believes that
cryptocurrencies and
blockchain technology can
generate huge wealth and
deliver a fairer form of
capitalism, aka optimists.DEFI
Short for decentralised
finance. DeFi uses the
blockchain to cut out the
middleman — banks,mortgage brokers, currency
exchanges — allowing
people to transact with one
another in safety. We hope.NON-FUNGIBLE
TOKENS (NFTS)
The term of the moment.
NFTs are, in effect,
guaranteed certificates of
digital ownership, stored on
the blockchain. A piece of
digital art is easily replicable,
for example, but NFTs allow
for its ownership to be
exclusive and verified.