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From Vitalik Buterin to Balaji Srinivasan, Brian Armstrong and Roger Ver, it appears that evidently no sooner have you ever grow to be a crypto billionaire than you’re off attempting to find the key to immortality.
In early 2020, when the pandemic made everybody obsessive about mortality, Buterin wrote: “Can I counsel anti-aging analysis? Getting older is a humanitarian catastrophe that kills as many individuals as WW2 each two years… Let’s finish it.”
He put his cash the place his mouth is. Buterin donated 46 trillion SHIB the next yr to the Way forward for Life Institute — value $665.8 million — and has additionally donated many thousands and thousands extra to SENS Analysis Basis and the Methuselah Basis.
Bitcoin OG Roger Ver intends to bear cryogenic preservation when he dies; Tron founder Justin Solar donated $51 million to the Longevity Prize; and Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson invested $100 million in a clinic in Wyoming that plans to launch a trial evaluating a mixed stem cell and hyperbaric oxygen chamber remedy.
Hoskinson has volunteered to be the primary check topic.
“If my speculation is correct, we are able to reverse ageing by over 10 years,” Hoskinson advised DL Information. “I’m going to be the primary man, the very first man. I’m getting fats and previous and it will be good to reside a bit of longer and be more healthy.”
However what precisely is the hyperlink between magic-internet-money fans and the warfare on getting old? The reality seems to be deeper and weirder than you may count on.
Longevity is one downside the crypto-rich can’t but clear up
Benji Leibowitz, founding father of the longevity analysis token platform Pump.science, tells Journal it’s solely pure for crypto millionaires to set their sights on one downside their wealth can’t but purchase an answer to.
“Numerous us begin off attempting to resolve the cash downside, after which when folks clear up that and sources are not a shortage, then they understand that point is now their scarce useful resource, and they also wish to attempt to commerce their monetary sources for time,” he says.
“Crypto is pretty audacious. And so, I believe it takes an audacious phenotype to suppose that you could beat dying… And to identical to [think], you’ll be able to engineer your approach out of something.”
“I believe it’s some mixture of this Wild West angle mixed with infinite sources and scarce time,” he concludes.
Former Coinbase chief know-how officer Balaji Srinivasan definitely resembles that comment and has made longevity a necessary strand of his audacious Community College program, with assist from Don’t Die multi-millionaire Bryan Johnson.
Johnson advised Journal late final yr that if he hadn’t grow to be obsessive about eliminating getting old, he would have been all in on crypto. “There’s a actuality the place my whole life is crypto,” he stated, though even he wasn’t certain why the 2 fields have been linked.
“I’m unsure I fully perceive both,” he stated. “I imply, the connection looks as if they’re parallel tracks that in the event you’re into one, you’re sort of into the opposite.
“Bitcoin essentially rejects inflation, and I essentially reject getting old. We mainly settle for these sluggish boil deaths, and we each reject the sluggish boil dying.”
Brian Armstrong allocates 2% of Coinbase shares to longevity
Again in 2022, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong introduced plans to spend 2% of his stake within the listed trade to fund longevity analysis. He co-founded New Restrict the next yr, which goals to radically prolong lifespan.
“Longevity feels prefer it’s tractable,” he stated in January this yr. “Somebody might actually make a breakthrough right here, or many individuals, within the subsequent ten years. It’s not like ‘oh we wish to do time journey,’ pie within the sky, too far sooner or later. That is one thing laborious however tractable. And that’s within the candy spot of one thing that’s value engaged on. You wish to be early however proper.”
He additionally made a large donation to the Canine Getting older Undertaking, which is operating scientific trials to see if Rapamycin can sluggish getting old in canines. Co-director Matt Kaeberlein says he spoke with Armstrong many occasions within the lead-up to the donation.
“Brian is clearly a superb man but additionally very considerate,” he says. New Restrict is “centered on epigenetic reprogramming … so I do know it’s one thing that he’s deeply inquisitive about and has put a good portion of his personal sources in the direction of.”
Kaeberlein is a extremely revered longevity researcher who has printed greater than 200 scientific papers. He’s additionally the founding father of well being optimization tech firm Optispan and the Wholesome Getting older and Longevity Analysis Institute on the College of Washington.
Over the previous 5 years, he says he’s seen extra funds flowing into longevity analysis from the crypto group however notes tech billionaire Jeff Bezos additionally invested in regenerative drugs firm Altos in 2021, and Google spent $1.5 billion establishing the California Life Firm (Calico).
“I believe there’s a pure form of connection between the tech group, crypto group and the longevity group,” he says, describing all of them as “huge thinkers, individuals who are likely to suppose exterior the field and perhaps even insurgent a bit of bit in opposition to conventional approaches.”
Leibowitz steered that some tech folks see getting old as simply one other engineering downside that may be mounted. However whereas Kaeberlein says getting old might be “the unsolved downside” in human well being — it’s lots trickier than many count on.
“You do see folks with an engineering mindset come into getting old biology with that form of perspective, after which they get into the science, and so they understand it’s far more difficult than it looks as if from the surface, and it’s powerful to engineer your approach round getting old,” he says.
“However who is aware of, perhaps if we be taught sufficient, we are able to get there.”
Crypto to the rescue as longevity analysis is poorly funded
Dr. Max Unfried, analysis fellow on the Nationwide College of Singapore’s Heart for Wholesome Longevity, tells Journal Large Tech and crypto donations give the deceptive impression that longevity analysis is well-funded. However, the truth is, most funding is allotted towards curing illnesses reasonably than trying to increase lifespan.
For instance, within the US, the Nationwide Most cancers Institute’s finances is round 20 occasions greater than the funding directed to Getting older Biology analysis on the Nationwide Institute of Getting older.
“There’s a perspective of getting old (analysis) by lots of people, (that) some huge cash must be there,” he says, including that’s removed from the truth. “And I believe that’s why crypto is available in, the place you really can get some cash from crypto for analysis that might not get cash by conventional routes.”
Quite a few DAOs have stepped in to assist fund experimental analysis, typically with the promise of tokenizing the ensuing mental property. Unfried is a former member of VitaDAO, which has 10,000 members and helps fund longevity analysis and tokenize therapies.
Srinivasan and Armstrong each donated to VitaDAO, which additionally has hyperlinks to the longevity token buying and selling platforms Molecule and Pump.science.
There are additionally extra narrowly centered teams like HydraDAO (analysis into organic substitute elements), CryoDAO (cryogenics), BiohackerDAO (life extension hacking) and Rejuve.ai (which makes use of crypto to incentivize crowdsourced well being information.)
None of those initiatives splash round huge cash in crypto phrases, with VitaDAO’s treasury holding round $6 million in liquid property. It has funded round 24 analysis initiatives up to now with $4.2 million.
However within the underfunded longevity analysis area, the place half of scientists spend 25%–50% of their time chasing grants, that’s a significant amount of cash, says Unfried.
“The few thousands and thousands in crypto cash phrases is definitely a relatively massive share, proper? Particularly if you wish to do extra moonshot analysis.”
And creating a brand new longevity drug actually is a moonshot. As of early 2025, there aren’t any medicine accredited by the FDA to particularly deal with getting old, although some present FDA-approved therapies have proven promise in trials. They embody Metformin, Rapamycin and the load loss drug Semaglutide (often known as Ozempic, Wegovy).
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Crypto’s hacker mindset results in longevity biohacking
Co-lead of the Web3 pod at VitaDAO, Alex Miloski believes the hacker mindset can lead some crypto folks to grow to be inquisitive about accelerating biotech.
“The longevity area is correct in the course of that as a result of it’s really attempting to nearly hack biology proper? As a result of you aren’t imagined to not age. So, I believe that hacker mindset may play a task,” he says.
“It’s an space that has been underfunded or under-appreciated, and it’s basically attempting to disrupt the whole healthcare system as nicely. If we clear up getting old, then the whole healthcare system will look lots completely different. So, I believe there’s some intersection between what crypto is attempting to do for finance and what [we’re] attempting to do for healthcare.”
One DAO that takes the longevity hacking strategy actually is BiohackerDAO. It was based early final yr after a bunch of biohackers met on the Vitalia longevity pop-up metropolis in Honduras.
Founding steward Mgoes says the group ranges in age from early 20s to late 60s, with many working in crypto, tech or well being startups.
They’re “fans about Biohacking, cell enhancement and simply sort of like spending money and time and sources of their free time to self-experiment and measure their very own biomarkers — sort of like Bryan Johnson is doing, however at a much less [high] spending scale.”
In November, the DAO raised $1.3 million on Juicebox, with members discussing and voting on what experiments and initiatives they wished to assist. Analysis on the positioning to this point has checked out whether or not intranasal insulin can enhance cognitive means and the way EMF radiation impacts sleep. In December, the DAO launched Intra, which it calls the “world’s first tokenized biomarker information market” to commerce health tracker information.
Biohacking your strategy to longevity or immortality
Mgoes says he’s thought lots concerning the causes for the crossover between crypto and longevity communities.
“Crypto individuals are very tech savvy, and longevity or biohacking is mainly simply know-how utilized to biology, to the human physique. It’s most likely one of many greatest untapped, or undertapped, frontiers of know-how that we’ve got,” he says.
The biohacker believes crypto’s libertarian ethos extends to “self-autonomy over your individual physique so you’ll be able to resolve what substances you are taking” in addition to rethinking issues from a contemporary perspective.
“These folks even have a mindset that always goes in opposition to established programs,” he says.
“Like, let’s neglect about our conception of healthcare and likewise our conception of human limitations, resembling our lifespans. And let’s simply deal with this concept of mortality and decay of our our bodies from first ideas.”
A few of these concepts stray into the sector of “transhumanism,” which is a philosophical and mental motion that seeks to make use of tech to assist humanity transcend its present organic limitations. Mgoes says that “guiding, shaping, directing, even accelerating human evolution … These are very key fields notably in transhumanism, and that’s one thing that we, inside BiohackerDAO, vibe with very, very a lot.”
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Transhumanists, crypto and longevity
The most effective-known transhumanists in crypto is SingularityNet founder Ben Goertzel, who popularized the time period “synthetic common intelligence.” The venture’s Helpful AGI convention in Panama final yr featured a variety of different well-known transhumanists, together with Venezuelan futurist José Cordeiro.
He believes AI will assist result in Longevity Escape Velocity by 2030 — that’s a hypothetical level at which medical science is ready to prolong lifespan by a couple of yr, for yearly we age. (It was additionally one of the vital common Journal tales of 2024.)
Cordeiro tells Journal the hyperlink between the crypto and longevity communities appears fairly easy to him. “I imagine that crypto individuals are very futuristic minded, and they also get over time in all topics concerning the future, and that features longevity and clearly residing ceaselessly… younger,” he says.
Transhumanism can typically make numerous abnormal folks fairly uncomfortable — particularly with its extra speculative, science-fiction-like concepts.
The extra conventional longevity tutorial Kaeberlein says he doesn’t have any objection to transhumanism or “what most individuals would think about fringe parts of the longevity area.” Nonetheless, he warns in opposition to overstating progress within the discipline.
“I believe it may be detrimental when it’s talked about in a non-scientific approach,” he says. “There’s nothing about biology that tells us it’s unimaginable to cease getting old and even reverse getting old. It’s simply we haven’t completed it but. And I believe anyone who actually understands the science, and is being sincere about it, must agree we appear to be we’re fairly distant from that.”
From his perspective, speaking about extending the human lifespan by 500 years as if it have been an imminent chance downplays the importance of the rather more lifelike achievements we’re prone to see.
“We’re not near 500 years. I believe we’re fairly shut to twenty years. And in order that’s my concern — that it could possibly diminish the affect,” he says.
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Andrew Fenton
Based mostly in Melbourne, Andrew Fenton is a journalist and editor overlaying cryptocurrency and blockchain. He has labored as a nationwide leisure author for Information Corp Australia, on SA Weekend as a movie journalist, and at The Melbourne Weekly.