Former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan Calls for 'Foot Voting' to Move to Singapore
Former Coinbase Chief Technology Officer and proponent of the "Network State" theory, Balaji Srinivasan, posted on social media platform X, stating that "democracy is the consent of the governed," and in the internet age, this consent is expressed not only through voting but also through "foot voting." He called on all what he terms "democratic capitalists of the internet age" to gather in Singapore for an offline meeting before October 9, to join the "new community" he advocates.
Srinivasan was born in Long Island, New York, to parents who were doctors immigrating from Tamil Nadu, India. He holds a Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD in Electrical Engineering, as well as a Master’s in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University. In his entrepreneurial career, he co-founded the genetic testing company Counsyl (acquired by Myriad Genetics for $375 million in 2018) and the Bitcoin mining startup 21e6 (later renamed Earn.com, acquired by Coinbase for $120 million in 2018), which led him to become Coinbase's first CTO. He was also a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz from 2013 to 2019. In 2023, he officially renounced his U.S. citizenship in favor of Singaporean citizenship, embodying the "foot voting" he advocates.
Srinivasan published the book "The Network State: How to Start a New Country" in 2022, which quickly reached second place on The Wall Street Journal's bestseller e-book list. In the book, he proposes that digital communities can crowdfund to purchase land globally, establish "startup societies," and gradually seek diplomatic recognition, drawing inspiration from economist Albert O. Hirschman's "exit" theory. This concept has garnered many followers in tech and libertarian circles, but critics argue it has elements of "dictatorship" and "neocolonialism."
Srinivasan has put these ideas into practice— in September 2024, he launched an offline community project called "Network School" in Forest City, Johor, Malaysia, adjacent to Singapore. The initial pilot lasted 90 days with about 100 participants, expanding into a regular one-year program in early 2025, where participants paid about $1,500 per month for accommodation, meals, fitness, and tech workshops. However, the project was ordered to shut down by the Iskandar Puteri City Council in Malaysia on July 21, 2026, for violating business license conditions and land use regulations, amid controversies involving Israeli students holding second passports. The following day (July 22), Srinivasan's team signed a five-year memorandum of cooperation with Kazakhstan's Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development to relocate the project to Kazakhstan.
In addition to the aforementioned community projects, Srinivasan also holds an annual "Network State Conference" in Singapore— the 2025 conference will take place on October 3 at Marina Bay Sands, with tickets priced at $99, attracting over 3,000 registrations. Speakers include Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, and government representatives from Singapore, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and El Salvador. The call for "foot voting" in Singapore on October 9 continues the tradition of this annual offline gathering.
From the perspective of resource and population flow, initiatives like Srinivasan's "Network State" are essentially competing for the attraction and sense of belonging of specific groups, particularly the "digital nomad" community with capital and technical skills. Countries and regions like Singapore and Dubai that actively support such activities are effectively using relatively relaxed regulatory environments, tax policies, and residency conveniences to attract this high-skilled, high-net-worth population to concentrate their capital, businesses, and entrepreneurial projects. The previous Malaysian project was halted due to political sensitivities (related to the Israeli controversy), and its transition to Kazakhstan illustrates that the location of such "Network State" communities heavily depends on the political risk preferences and diplomatic considerations of host country governments, rather than purely commercial or technical factors. Project organizers must continuously seek willing "hosts" among different sovereign nations, leading to a pattern where capital and talent migrate in response to policy friendliness.
Source: Public Information
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Srinivasan's career trajectory is a historical case study of "exit and restart"— from founding the genetic testing company Counsyl and successfully cashing out, to diving into the Bitcoin mining startup and serving as Coinbase's first CTO, to publishing the book "The Network State" in 2022 that systematically presents the "foot voting" theory, and finally renouncing his U.S. citizenship for Singaporean citizenship in 2023. Each step in his career and identity choices reinforces the same logic: when existing systems (whether traditional healthcare, traditional finance, or sovereign nationality systems) fail to meet expectations, the choice is to "exit" and establish alternatives, rather than stay within the existing system to push for reform.
The pathways for capital and talent movement are clear— the tech and capital networks Srinivasan built during his time as a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz are now directly translated into the appeal of the "Network State Conference" (the 2025 conference attracting heavyweight guests like Vitalik Buterin, Ben Horowitz, and Brian Armstrong, as well as government representatives from Singapore, Dubai, etc.); his "Network School" community project adopts a membership fee model (about $1,500 per month), continuously guiding the residence, consumption, and entrepreneurial activities of these high-net-worth, high-skill participants to specific physical locations, while leveraging regulatory and tax incentives provided by host governments to partially "extract" capital and talent from traditional sovereign systems, redirecting them to these willing emerging destinations.
A comparable historical case is the large-scale "foot voting" migration of European immigrants to the U.S. from the late 19th to early 20th century, as well as the flow of some capital and talent to emerging free ports like Singapore and Hong Kong during the Cold War— these destinations similarly attracted capital and talent outflows from the existing system through relatively relaxed institutional environments and policy benefits. The difference is that Srinivasan's current "Network State" practice digitizes and community-izes this logic, attempting to bypass the individual decision-making model of traditional immigration and directly negotiate institutional arrangements with sovereign states in the form of fully established communities. In terms of industry positioning, the "Network State" movement is currently in a phase of trial and error, transitioning from theoretical concepts to tangible implementations— the shutdown of the Malaysian project and the rapid takeover by Kazakhstan illustrate that the site selection of such projects heavily relies on the political willingness of specific host countries, and a stable, replicable landing model has yet to be formed.
Essentially, this represents a regulatory competition-driven reallocation of capital and talent— as traditional sovereign states become more conservative or tighten immigration policies, tax systems, and regulatory environments, countries and regions like Singapore, Dubai, and Kazakhstan that actively relax entry conditions to attract high-skilled, high-net-worth groups will gain advantages in the "institutional competition" among nations for net inflows of capital and talent; this reallocation occurs because, in the digital age, capital and technical talent possess far greater mobility than before. Once a jurisdiction establishes a relative advantage in regulatory friendliness, capital and talent will quickly "vote with their feet" to regroup, and the case of Malaysia proactively giving up this group due to political sensitivities and transferring it to Kazakhstan illustrates that governments are increasingly treating "whether to welcome such mobile populations" as a dynamically adjustable national strategic variable.
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