In the US

The blockchain of life: when longevity meets cryptocurrency

From Montana's groundbreaking law to the alliance between the crypto community and the city of longevity: between experimentation, investment and new ethical questions

by Francesca Cerati

10 June 2025

4' min read

Key points

A model for the future or a dangerous precedent?
Medical tourism and open-air laboratory
Crypto, biohacking and the dream of defeating ageing
Decentralised finance for decentralised medicine

4' min read

In the heart of the American Deep West, Montana is preparing to become a 'Wild West' centre for clinical trials. With the recent passage of Senate Bill 535, the state becomes the first in the US to allow patients - even non-terminal ones - access to experimental therapies that have only passed Phase I. In essence, by bypassing the more rigorous Phase II and III trials, Montana's law drastically speeds up the time it takes for patients to access new therapies compared to the traditional Fda approval process.

In fact, the law creates an official regulatory framework that authorises clinics and healthcare facilities to become like experimental treatment centres, allowing the use of drugs that, while not yet demonstrating efficacy, have passed initial safety tests. This is a radical change from federal regulation, which only allows access to such therapies for terminally ill patients, based on the Right to Try Act of 2017.

A model for the future or a dangerous precedent?

According to supporters, including scientists, biotech start-ups, and above all the longevity movement, this is a courageous and necessary step. The new regulatory framework was strongly advocated by groups promoting a model of preventive medicine, centred on the individual being able to decide which therapies to try, especially when it comes to chronic diseases or natural age-related decline.

But the move is far from risk-free. Phase I treatments involve only a few volunteers and serve mainly to evaluate the safety of the compound. Only a small percentage of these drugs reach the market: the rest fail due to side effects or ineffectiveness. In addition, there are problems with liability, insurance cover and the protection of patients, especially the economically vulnerable. In this respect, however, the law requires that 2 per cent of clinics' profits be allocated to funds for low-income patients and strengthens informed consent, requiring supervision by a doctor and a detailed description of the risks.

Meta medical tourism and open-air laboratory

The most immediate effects could be seen geographically and economically: Montana risks - or hopes - to become a new Mecca for medical tourism. Patients from all over the world, attracted by therapies that are still illegal elsewhere, could converge on the state, stimulating a parallel economy of biotech start-ups, private clinics and foundations.

One of the most active voices in promoting the law is in fact Niklas Anzinger, founder of the Infinita City project, who envisions Montana as a hub for decentralised medical innovation. The vision? A leaner system where therapeutic development is not hampered by excessive regulation and where the state becomes a living experiment in bioethical governance.

Crypto, biohacking and the dream of defeating ageing

The new model could become a 'special regulation zone' for longevity and anti-ageing therapies. A concept familiar to the crypto philosophy, which has always sought out spaces where new rules can be experimented. And it is precisely on this terrain that an increasingly concrete alliance is forming between the crypto and longevity communities, seemingly distant from each other, but which instead have deep affinities. Crypto culture, accustomed to defying dogma and moving in regulatory frontier spaces, sees longevity as an area of strategic investment: biotechnology, applied health Ai, new decentralised insurance models. And both communities - crypto and longevity - share a culture of risk, individual autonomy and radical innovation. Biohacking is, after all, the 'fintech of the human body'.

The city of longevity, an urban vision centred on health, experimentation and technology, has found fertile ground in the world of crypto investors and thinkers. For many early blockchain millionaires, extending life has become the new horizon. Having solved the problem of money scarcity, they focus on the most precious and unbought resource: time. "Cryptocurrencies are bold, and it takes a bold phenotype to think you can defeat death," said Benji Leibowitz, founder of the Pump.science platform, which tokenizes medical research.

And these are not just declarations of intent. Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, has invested millions in anti-aging research. Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano, has financed an experimental clinic in Wyoming and has volunteered for a combined stem cell and hyperbaric chamber therapy. Roger Ver, among the first investors in Bitcoin, has already signed up for cryopreservation of his own body. And Justin Sun, founder of Tron, has donated over $50 million to the Longevity Prize.

The common thread? A libertarian vision of health, according to which each individual should be able to choose how to experiment on his or her own body, without having to wait for the lengthy timescales of medical bureaucracy.

Decentralised finance for decentralised medicine

It is not surprising that several Dao (decentralised autonomous organisations) have started to fund medical research and laboratories in exchange for tokenizing the intellectual property of the results. It is a new way of conceiving scientific research: distributed, open source and accessible. VitaDao, for instance, has over 10,000 members and finances studies on longevity, combining collective investment and decentralised intelligence.

Montana, thus, is a candidate to become the epicentre of an epochal change that not only concerns medicine, but the very way in which society, science and economy interact. It remains to be seen whether this new biotechnological gold rush will bring progress or collateral damage.