In a new documentary for BBC Two, Matt Shea gains inside access to the tech billionaires looking to disrupt centralised systems of banking and governance and reshape our world using blockchain technology.

However, while some believe that crypto is the way to free money from government control, is it simply handing their power to tech entrepreneurs – a newer, less accountable elite?

The Tech Billionaire Takeover is on BBC Two at 9pm tonight and is available to stream on BBC iPlayer now.

There are more billionaires now than ever before and their wealth is growing fast.  The 12 richest people in the world now own almost the same total wealth as the bottom half of humanity.

Most of this is driven by tech billionaires whose individual fortunes are now beginning to rival the power of entire governments.

Among them, there’s a growing movement that sees the nation-state itself as an outdated operating system in need of an update.

The BBC investigates how these entrepreneurs are using technology to replace our financial systems, rewrite democracy as we know it, and create independent states of their own.

Matt speaks to crypto entrepreneur and billionaire Justin Sun.

Justin Sun’s company TRON is a blockchain: a global software network on which you can buy and sell crypto currencies.  Unlike a bank, it isn’t run by one single authority; it’s decentralised, existing across many computers all around the world, making it harder to tax and regulate.

Over 20 billion dollars’ worth of transactions happen every day on TRON; that’s 5 trillion a year.

Over half of all illicit crypto transactions reportedly happened on TRON.  It was allegedly used by Hamas and Hezbollah. And in July 2025 TRON became a publicly traded company.

“I have a strong belief that if crypto wants to succeed, we need to break the boundaries between traditional finance and the crypto world”, Justin says.

“Blockchain technology we have today is empowering individuals, rather than organisations. I think that’s very important.”

“I think that’s also why I believe the government will be useless: because of technology’s evolvement. Everyone can use technology to do anything they want in the world, and there is no way to stop them.”

“I think in the future the US presidential elections will run on blockchain.”

Justin is the lead investor in World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture set up by President Donald Trump’s family, and where he has invested over 75 million dollars.

President Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, is a co-founder emeritus of World Liberty Financial. The company is run in part by Trump and Witkoff’s sons, including Donald Trump Jr, Eric Trump, Barron Trump, and Zack Witkoff.

President Trump officially stepped down from the company once he took office but his family trust still own and profit from it, selling a cryptocurrency coin called USD1.

The Trumps receive 75% of net profits every time the coin is sold by World Liberty Financial.  As of December 2025, they have reportedly made over 2.3 billion dollars from crypto and stand to make much more.

World Liberty Financial’s ability to make millions of dollars for the Trump family trust, and their connections to the sitting President, have led the public to ask: what is World Liberty Financial really for, and why are people like Justin Sun investing in it?

Back in 2020, under President Biden, the US financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC, began to turn its eye towards the crypto industry. They claimed it was rife with fraud and criminality, and they began investigating those in the industry they believed were responsible.

One target was Justin Sun and in March 2023 the SEC charged him with fraud, claiming he manipulated the price of his tokens, and hid payments to celebrities who promoted them to the public.

Once Trump was elected, Sun invested in World Liberty Financial.

Shortly after, the SEC – now re-staffed by Trump with crypto-friendly appointees – filed a joint motion with Justin Sun’s lawyers to pause the investigation into him. Within a year, the case was dismissed, and Rainberry, a company owned by Sun, paid a $10m civil penalty.

A spokesperson for Justin Sun said: “The SEC case [against Justin Sun] was dismissed. The only party that reached a settlement on no admit/no deny basis was Rainberry (a company acquired by Justin Sun). The dismissal did not impose any penalty on Justin Sun, Tron Foundation, or BitTorrent Foundation.”

Justin Sun’s representative also said: “TRON is helping set the industry standard for combatting illicit blockchain transactions and is being publicly recognised for doing so. Justin Sun conceived and brought to life a first-of-its-kind collaboration that works around-the-clock with law enforcement agencies across 23 jurisdictions.”

In response to our approach for comment, a representative for President Donald Trump said: “This is the same, tired narrative that Democrats have pushed against President Trump, his family, and his administration for a decade. President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public – which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media. There are no conflicts of interest.”

However, it isn’t just banks and money that crypto billionaires like Justin Sun want to replace. They believe that laws, voting, and government itself can all become digital transactions on the blockchain.

Sun is already using his wealth and power to help build a new country that puts this theory to the test.

In 2024 he was elected Prime Minister of a small micro-nation called Liberland via blockchain elections.

This tech-libertarian utopia, located on a muddy bit of land in the Danube River, unclaimed by neighbouring Serbia nor Croatia, has attracted the support of over 30 billionaires, many of them from the world of crypto.

Instead of trying to fight the government in their own countries, the Liberlanders realised they could use blockchain technology to just make their own, replacing politicians and laws with computer code.

Matt speaks to Vít Jedlička, a Czech right-wing libertarian politician and president of Liberland.

Explaining the election system in Liberland, Vít says, “The elections are every three months. They’re taking place on blockchain and the person is elected with merits. So the people that have more merits are able to have more say in who is going to be in the leadership of the country.”

Liberland merits can be earned through helping build Liberland’s infrastructure or through financial contributions.

The system allows those with more money to wield more power.

Matt Shea also speaks to Tim Draper, a US Billionaire Venture Capitalist and Libertarian known for his early investment in companies like Tesla, Space X and Skype.

He is also an investor in Prospera, and is creating his own digital country, Draper Nation, with bitcoin as the national currency.

Matt visits Draper University to speak to Tim Draper. Half university, half Dragon’s Den, Draper U trains aspiring tech founders while having them compete for Draper’s investment.

“I created Draper University of Heroes. Our thinking was the world needs more heroes, let’s make heroes in a very weird way” Tim says.

On his vision for the future, Tim says “Government is providing bad service at a high cost. Now we have new technology; we have Bitcoin, we have blockchain, we have smart contracts, and now we have these decentralised autonomous organisations.”

But can this replace government and banking?

“Absolutely. That’s what’s happening. It’s just a matter of time”, Tim says.

To find out more about the tech industry’s involvement in US politics, Matt speaks to reporter Chris Harland Dunaway, an expert in crypto.

“Up until this point, the fossil fuel industry has been the biggest campaign finance donor. This last election cycle, they contributed around $219 million, but crypto surpassed that and did $238 million”, Chris says.

This makes crypto the most powerful lobby in US politics today.

 “When you take an example like the new White House ballroom, and you get the list of donors, it contains a lot of names we’re familiar with of companies like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. But further down the list, around 8th, 9th, 10th, you start seeing cryptocurrency companies. Coinbase, Ripple, Tether.”

This new generation of tech billionaires believes its technologies can replace democracy as we know it and upend the global financial system, however the question remains as to who they want to demolish it for.

While this new order promises decentralisation and freedom from the old power structures, what we are seeing instead is wealth and power flowing to those who control the technology. 

The Tech Billionaire Takeover is on BBC Two at 9pm and is available to stream on BBC iPlayer now.