Alex Ugorji

Alex Ugorji is an educator and entrepreneur interested in prosperity zones, breakaway civilisations and disruptive technologies. He studied International Politics and Economics at Middlebury College before earning a master’s in education policy from Stanford University.

He went on to start Crypto Frontier, an intentional crypto community in Saipan, and to co-found the blockchain software company RaiPay and the financial-technology company Nakamoto Financial. He later moved to Ciudad Morazán, Honduras, to become one of the first residents of a free private city, where he works as a consultant, community manager and Free Cities ambassador.

Crypto Frontier was an attempt to bring cryptocurrency businesses to the Northern Mariana Islands, and it was shelved as United States regulators took a closer interest, which is what sent him looking for a jurisdiction outside the American perimeter.

In Ciudad Morazán he helped build the payment layer that lets a resident live entirely on crypto, which in a city built for Honduran factory workers is a more demanding test than it sounds: the point is not the technology but whether the corner shop takes it. He received the 2024 Free Cities Foundation Storyteller Award for his Morazán Monday series on X and for the outreach around it.