Bitcoin, Blockchains and the Bard

Abstract

This essay considers the relationship between Shakespeare’s cultural capital and the crypto-currency called Bitcoin, whose monetary ‘value’ fluctuates wildly (stylistically the name of the currency is capitalized, while the individual units are not). Each bitcoin is developed through ‘mining,’ the term for someone solving an algorithmic puzzle sent out to a network of users. This fairly new form of purchasing power could only exist through the development of blockchains, which are the record of transactions entered into a type of ledger, expanding with each new transaction. After tracing the origins of digital currency first, this essay turns its attention to blockchains to consider the value of each one for today’s investor, miner, and user of Shakespeare.. The third section of the essay connects Shakespeare’s dispossessed agency with this new form of monetary exchange, by focusing on the decentralization of Bitcoin, Blockchains, and the Bard. This essay also shows how the value of all three is determined by context, location, and use so that value is in the eye of the beholder; whether a Shakespeare scholar or a Bitcoin miner or a block chain itself, these variable objects remain “unsettled and unfettered, ever-moving in and out of human control.”