Almost an MNC: Bitcoin Entrepreneurs' Use of Collective Resources and Decoupling to Build Legitimacy

Abstract

Studies of legitimacy have typically looked at the creation and maintenance of legitimacy by both established and new organisations. This paper looks at how a set of entrepreneurs use the legitimacy of one, Alternative, community as a scaffold to build legitimacy in a more Mainstream one, despite the fact that norms between the two were often contradictory. Studying Bitcoin entrepreneurs in Europe, we find that the distributed, digital community of Bitcoin operates as a kind of MNC: the larger decentralised (and Alternative) community acts as the headquarters, while the local entrepreneurs seeking Mainstream legitimacy behave like subsidiaries. This allow them to rely on the legitimacy of the community at large, while simultaneously distinguishing themselves from the broader Bitcoin community as they seek legitimacy.