SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Can you picture it? A colossal 450-foot statue of a Greek mythological figure rising up from Alcatraz Island to tower over the San Francisco Bay?
That’s the proposal that’s been put forth by crypto entrepreneur Ross Calvin and his American Colossus Foundation. Calvin is the founder and CEO of Bitcoin mining firm Parhelion.
He launched the American Colossus Foundation in 2024 as a “non-profit foundation dedicated to inspiring a cultural renaissance of civilizational power through the virtues of creativity, self-sovereignty and future-thinking.” According to Bloomberg, the idea for the Alcatraz statue came to Calvin on a 2018 visit to San Francisco.
Calvin, who lives in Denver according to his LinkedIn, reportedly watched the golden hour shimmer across the Bay and found it was missing something: a Statue of Liberty.
The proposed statue, “The Great Colossus of Prometheus on Alcatraz,” would be a “monument to American manifest destiny, to the liberating force of technology and entrepreneurship, and to the noble destiny of the West,” according to a message from Calvin on the American Colossus website.
“Standing taller than the Statue of Liberty, our monument inaugurates a new golden age, revering creativity and the heroic nature of man,” he continued. “It unapologetically symbolizes a brilliant, optimistic American future, calling us to visionary thinking, bold achievement, and forging this new world into a powerful ideal.”
The proposed statue would also mark, “the reclamation of our society from forces of desecration and collective mediocrity,” he added.
The first time the idea of building a statue on Alcatraz occurred to Calvin, as he told the Robert Stark podcast, was when he was about 10 years old.
He was “sailing past Alcatraz in the Bay and I looked at it and I saw, well gosh, what a crazy thing to have this kind of bummed out, insignificant thing on this island. And it’s a perfect place for a symbol of triumph and beauty.”
But why Prometheus, who according to Greek myth, stole fire from the gods and gave it to man?
According to American Colossus, the mythological figure is a “titan of innovative progress,” that will “inspire 1,000 years of Americans to overcome for the sake of nobility, beauty and creative endeavor.”
Building such a statue would of course be a colossal undertaking in itself, both literally and logistically. Firstly, it would require reclassifying Alcatraz, which is currently a national park, as a national monument. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has publicly claimed that the process of reopening it as a prison is already underway, which could further complicate the process.
According to Bloomberg, Calvin is planning to present Trump’s team with a pitch including renderings of the monument and a proposal for a technology museum, by the end of January. The price tag for the project is estimated to be around $450 million.
KRON4.com has reached out the American Colossus Foundation for more information.
