Are non-fungible tokens (NFTs) an extreme genre of synthetic assets, free-floating signifiers of speculative capital? Or does the same disconnection color many of the instruments of financialization? These questions are central to explaining why the NFT market experienced a significant decline in the second half of 2022. In early 2022, $17 billion worth of NFTs changed hands, but by November that figure had fallen to $400 million, a collapse of 97%. The fall in demand was catalyzed by a slump in the cryptocurrency market which wiped almost $9 billion from the combined value of all NFTs in circulation. This collapse has not dissuaded advocates from suggesting that these notes will revolutionize the global trade of digital assets by using blockchains to create jurisdiction-agonist notary functions. This chapter evaluates the merit of this view by looking at the current landscape in cross-border data flows in global digital capitalism. It reviews how NFTs are constructed upon underlying layers of digital data, blockchain, and cryptocurrency to try to place them beyond the jurisdiction of national regulators. Thereafter we assess how the โNFT phenomenonโ might be a compressed case of the broader features of digital capitalism and the financialization of public administration.
Over the last decade, digitalisation and the emergence of FinTechs promoted a disruptive shift in financial systems towards disintermediation. Platform based financial instruments were soon bundled by FinTechs, creating a new system of decentral platform based financial systems, which led to the erosion of national institutional settings. This market driven neoliberal agenda gained momentum particularly after the financial crisis of 2007-2009 when public regulatory forces aimed at reducing instability arising from global financialisation processes. However, the opposite was promoted, as FinTechs led not only to financialisation via platform financial structures, but also additional financialisation processes resulted from the implementation of decentral modes of personal finance e.g. robo-advisors. Elements of Green Finance are incorporated into these decentralized forms of finance. Analysing these developments, this paper critically investigates the structure and impact of decentralized financial systems to promote sustainable development.
The conventional process of credit document verification heavily relies on manual methods, making it tedious and time-consuming. The advent of self-sovereign identity (SSI) revolutionised the landscape of credit document verification. SSI empowers individuals with complete control over their identity, ensuring privacy, trust, and security. This paper presents an in-depth exploration of SSI's application in the credit processing domain. This paper highlights the implementation of SSI using the Trust over IP framework on Hyperledger Aries, empowering borrowers to own and control the sharing of their verifiable credentials. By integrating Hyperledger Aries and SSI, a robust and interoperable blockchain-based identity framework can be built. This allows individuals to store their verifiable credentials on a distributed ledger securely and selectively disclose them to lenders as needed. This model empowers borrowers to present accurate and tamper-proof credentials, enhancing data privacy, transparency, and trust, while promoting a borrower-centric approach to sharing credentials.
Aji Muhammad Fitra Firnanda, Bambang Satriya, Praptining Sukowati
Generally, the problem of housing and settlements is the incompatibility of the number of available housing when compared to the needs and the number of people who live there. The main issues are population, spatial planning and regional development, planning for housing and settlement development that is still not optimal, land and infrastructure, financing, building materials industry technology and construction services, institutions, community participation, and laws and regulations. The East Kutai Regency Government is committed to meeting the housing needs of MBR. However, due to the high number of backlogs where the dominance of the need for housing comes from low-income people at income levels below, a synchronization effort is needed that harmonizesbetween central regulations and local conditions. Therefore, research questions are formulated as follows: 1) How effective is the implementation of the housing grant policy for the MBR in the concept of reinventing the policy?; 2) What are the implementation factors and policy models that are in accordance with the conditions of East Kutai Province after the policy reinventing process? The purpose of this study is to measure the effectiveness of the implementation of the housing grant policy for the MBR in the concept of reinventing public policy, to analyze the driving and inhibiting factors for the implementation of housing finance, to formulate a housing grant policy model . The main theory in this research is public policy, while the supporting theory is the theory of social change, social behavior, functional structural. The concepts used include Reinventing Public Policy, Ecosoc Rights, Regional Autonomy, Synchronization, Residential Housing, Housing Financing for MBR, and Strategies for Acquisition and Acquisition of Houses for MBR. Mixed research methods (mix methods) combine quantitative and qualitative data. The research instruments were questionnaires and interview drafts using data collection techniques through surveys of 135 respondents and in-depth interviews with four informants. Data analysis performed synthesis of quantitative data and qualitative data. The results of this study are that the implementation of public policy on providing financial assistance through the FLPP program is effectively applied to MBR, taking into account the synchronization of the financing. The concept of reinventing describes the complexity of a public policy shifting into social policy in its implementation so as to form social protection originating from local initiatives. The result lies in the strength of MBR in putting forward local initiatives to establish social protection. The position of the MBR and the government are equal in implementing policies so that the concept of development is decentralized and easy to evaluate through synchronizing various things. The driving factor is related to the synergy, cooperation and transparency of stakeholders in interpreting social welfare.While the inhibiting factors underline the integrity and loyalty of stakeholders and MBR to utilize existing resources and adapt to the policy environment. So based on this influence a policy model emerges using the lens of reinventing policies that are based on guaranteeing social welfare and leading to local initiatives. Building a new concept regarding changing the position of public policy into social policy. This change in perspective highlights elements of social welfare guarantees and local initiatives for the implementation of a more autonomous and implementable policy for the MBR
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Andrew Dryhurst, Daniel โZachโ Sloman, Yazid Zahda
The Morphogenetic Rรฉgulation approach (MR) contributes to the Morphogenetic Approach by explaining the material and ideational origins of change and stasis in agency, structure, and culture. In this paper, we focus on the expressive quality of ideas and systemic persistence in three research projects. The first demystifies inclusive governance and its adverse impacts. It shows how, contrary to institutions of governance, inclusiveness is not simply a norm but actually the explication of corporate agentsโ ideas about rational choice institutionalism which leads to adverse impacts on vulnerable groups and ecologies known as adverse inclusion. The second investigates the role of ideas as adequacy and self-explication in guiding Palestinian actorsโ actions towards the deepening of neoliberalization in Palestine. The third explains the relevance of the systemic persistence problematique for understanding how three juxtaposed themes โ Web2, Web3, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) โ are shaping the political economy and infrastructure of the Internet.
This article examines non-fungible token (NFT) applications and their users through a qualitative textual analysis of NFT-based video game Axie Infinityโs Discord server. It considers NFT applicationsโ dual purposes as entertainment media and financial instruments and posits that the interests of capital inform usersโ engagement. In an environment defined by distrust and uncertainty, predominantly Filipino digital laborersโ (โScholarsโ) experiences and interactions with the gameโs ownership class (โManagersโ) reflect pre-existing patterns of exploitation made inexpensive by differences in currency valuations, accessible by access to digital devices, available by global financial uncertainty, possible by a lack of user protection and governance, and permissible by light government regulation. To navigate an interplay of designed systems and human behavior, users share gameplay and marketplace knowledge. The blurring of gaming, gambling, and finance discussed here risks fostering an increasingly gamified approach to work and finance and facilitates exploitation of global, stratified labor.
Money is money, securities are securities, and banking is banking. Their fundamentals are not changed by whether technology rails are centralized (classic) or pseudo-decentralized (virtual assets) โ the song remains the same. As such, this paper does not reinvent the wheel on why we should regulate cryptoasset centralized exchanges (CEXs), as there is enough bibliography from today to the XVII century to go around on that. Instead, we focus on how to regulate the CEXs, which comes into play in a world where their distributed ledger technology (DLT) rails are off-the-grid and hinder regulators from: (i) collecting market data (information asymmetry); and (ii) practical enforcement (technology/operational asymmetry). After revising current regulatory practices from various countries, we identify grounds for a practical approach โ we propose that regulators might enforce full trading/financial intermediation obligations on the CEXs by enacting an indirect regulation/gatekeeper scheme, as inspired by the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). In this model, regulators would restrict traditional institutions (i.e., banks, broker-dealers, clearings, funds) from transacting with CEXs which do not provide adequate evidence of material compliance with their trading/financial intermediation obligations. On a final remark, we narrate a growing movement which aims to insulate non-compliant crypto from the financial systems altogether, avoiding risks of contagion.
Drawing on Marx's theory of history, this article argues that the competition and capital accumulation inherent in the production of Bitcoin (i.e. โminingโ) are at odds with the narrative discourses that position Bitcoin as a revolutionary technology capable of subverting traditional power structures. Through an analysis of the evolution of Bitcoin mining, the article demonstrates how the material conditions of its production have shifted over time, leading to the concentration of mining power among a few large corporate entities and a concomitant erosion of the decentralized ethos that underpinned the early Bitcoin community. The article also argues that this shift is not simply a result of the โnaturalโ evolution of the technology, but also the outcome of specific social and economic forces that encourage the accumulation of capital over Bitcoin's democratic and decentralized potentialities. Overall, the article suggests that the narrative discourses surrounding Bitcoin need to be understood in relation to the material forces that shape its production and circulation, and that a more nuanced analysis of the interplay between material and discursive factors is necessary to fully grasp the dynamics of the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
This article discusses the entrepreneurial imaginary and the role of Web3 in the narratives of industry actors at the 2022 Lisbon Web Summit. This imaginary does not address the qualitative aspects of current crises but rather their potential for regenerating capital flows in the spirit of never letting a good crisis go to waste. The article argues that the wealthโtech nexus is symptomatic of the broader process of financialization of the economy and, in particular, of the growing role of private investment in the form of Venture Capital (VC), particularly illustrated by โunicornsโ. While capital allocation in the digital economy, both from private and public sources, currently exceeds its realization, this entrepreneurial imaginary builds expectations towards Web3 and effectively drives the valuation process and investorsโ returns, regardless of its future implementation.
This article will look at the financial geographies and legacies of neo-colonialism to critique the emergence of blockchain financialization in the developing world. Blockchain โfinancializationโ advances through the interplay of crypto imaginaries, new platform economies, and the trading infrastructure for highly leveraged financial products. The largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has presented itself as a champion of the blockchain for development paradigm in Africa. Its success in the region relies on the use of community leaders, hackathons, and the lobbying of governments for regulatory concessions. Binance operates on two scales. Firstly, it is part of a fintech vanguard attempting to dismantle New Deal financial regulatory systems in the Global North (Omarova, Yale Journal on Regulation, 2019, 36, 735โ793; Allen, H, DeFi: Shadow Banking 2.0?, 2022). Secondly, it as an agent of financialization in the developing world, promoting DeFi to map the speculative micro-financial practices of the Global South. Crypto and blockchain thus represent extensions of โsubprime empireโ (Schuster, Current Anthropology, 2021, 62, 389โ411) in which marginal economic activities in fragile developing world contexts feed into the North-South extraction of value. This article will outline Binanceโs forays into Nigeria as an example of the micro and macro scales of neocolonial finance and the interplay of infrastructure, territory, and the social imaginary in blockchain.
Recently blockchain has become a tool for spatial coordination and appropriation. Globally, the tokenization of land and housing has led to new forms of datafication and increased financialization. In the case of land non-fungible tokens), security token offerings, and blockchain-based real estate investment trusts, blockchains act as exclusionary digital platforms, with new socio-technical assemblages emerging as complex predatory formations of speculation that are intentionally obfuscatory and difficult to regulate. With the security token offering, crowdfunding and venture capital are combined with cryptocurrency to create a โtokenized venture capital fundโ tied to tangible assets, such as ownership rights in housing, real estate, or land. Distributed ledgers are proposed to be used as the digital technology underlying new forms of land/property documentation, ownership, and inhabitation โ from conducting and recording land surveys and title creation to transference of land/property rights. This paper addresses the question: how equitable is tokenized equity โ does it prioritize the right to the city for all or to all but a very few? This paper looks toward the means of contestation against extractive crypto-settlements, speculation, and housing financialization, critically comparing a range of proposed distributed ledger technology projects that claim to inject equity in the system, pose alternative housing economies, or leverage distributed ledgers for land rights and data sovereignty. I question the utility and limits of datafication and explore how engaging with digital technology โ with or without distributed ledgers โ can raise awareness and enact alternative forms of housing and land stewardship, from cooperativism to Community Land Trusts and to counter-hegemonic commoning practices.
This paper analyzes the role of public sector wage-setting (PSWS) in Mediterranean countries before and after the Eurozone crisis. Extant literature suggests public sector wage inflation to be the norm in these countries due to the lack of institutional preconditions for wage restraint and the role of PSWS in shoring up the publicly financed domestic demand-led growth regime. Yet, the cases of France, Italy, Portugal and Spain do not to neatly fit these predictions, showing instead notable cross-country and intra-country diachronic variation. We provide an alternative account by treating PSWS as fiscal policy under EMU. Variation in PSWS outcomes before the Eurozone crisis is best explained in terms of the institutions governing PSWS. In France and Portugal, PSWS is highly centralized at the national level, and a strong Finance Ministry plays a central role in the oversight of PSWS to ensure budgetary discipline. To the contrary, Italy and Spain underwent processes of disorganized decentralization of PSWS through the 1990s and 2000s, leading to fragmented โ and often clientelist โ practices resulting in disorderly inflationary wage increases across the country. After the sovereign debt crisis, all countries relied on restrictive PSWS to support internal devaluation and fiscal adjustment, though with different intensity related to the country-specific problem load and external constraints.
We examined what happened in the policy structure in Seattle๏ผWA), USA, gazing at the institutional abolition by mayor's Executive Order (in 2016) of the Neighborhood Council ("District Council" in Seattle) system, an "inner-city decentralized" organization. We investigated the support-allocation for this system by the city (Neighborhood Service Centers, staffing of Neighborhood District Coordinators) over years, as well as as a basis for that the shift in the "policy attitude" of the mayor and uconventional city council members,who who emerged en masse in 2015. As a result, a new framework was required to respond to the overwhelmingly rapid and unprecedented changes in urban structure (population, inequality, and housing prices) that hit Seattle since around 2010. The energetic response was a radical-left coalition of radical mayor Ed Murray and a new phase of new city council members, many of whom had emerged as a result of the primary election reforms. A "policy structural shift" was underway that attempted to implement a policy mix of housing policy, finance, and taxation measures, with the concept of housing expansion in conjunction with affordable housing (ap-zoning). In the process, it turned out that in the eyes of these political leaders, the Neighborhood Council's system, the inner-city decentralized system was an old and useless structure to face the new challenges of urban policy and was to be discarded.
This chapter explores how new financial technologies including blockchain, cryptocurrency, and decentralized finance present distinctly gendered challenges. Examining a range of cases, it calls for more attention to the deployment of decentralized finance in the Global South, noting that such interventions often fail to live up to their promise while circumventing best practices associated with ethics and gender mainstreaming.
In todayโs sophisticated investment environment, traditional securities no longer have the exciting traction they used to have. For sophisticated investors such as hedge funds, even derivative products are considered typical, mainstream instruments. The continuing appetite for other types of investments has led to the search for and designation of alternative investments. In this chapter, the increasing popularity of and the desire for these new investment areas are explored. The fundamental characteristics of these alternatives are presented. Specifically, real estate in forestry, undeveloped land, many forms of art and antiques, structured innovative securities, environmental products, non-fungible tokens (N.F.T.s), metaverse real estate, other metaverse investments, and investments in innovative ideas are examined in depth. The professional organization in this area, the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (C.A.I.A.) Association is introduced, along with detailed information about how to become a full charter member. The chapter concludes with a real-life project where the portfolio professional (the reader) investigates the profit potential of a portfolio purely based on different types of alternative investments.
Norazmawati Md. Sani Abd. Rahim, Muhammad Shafiq Kamaruddin
Affordable housing has become the main issue of concern among Malaysians, especially those from low-income background in Klang Valley. Limited housing supply in key areas within Klang Valley due to no interest from private developers has forced low-income people to live far from their workplaces. It is considered unprofitable by many private developers because of heavily regulated policies sanctioned by the government, decentralization of affordable housing agencies, and requiring specific design, which can drive the cost of development. Furthermore, access to home financing for low-income people is limited due to their current economic situation and financial constraints. The research focuses on the factors to facilitate private developers in financing and the possibility for the private developers to venture into a home financing structure and analyze other possibilities and solutions that can be implemented with the collaboration between the developers and government.
Aim: This study investigates the use of bitcoin by nonviolent resistance campaigns to counter state financial censorship, a topic underrepresented in academic literature. Method: This study is designed as descriptive basic research with its methodological approach as case studies. The study presents a global dataset of 93 financial censorship events by government authorities from 1981 to 2023, encompassing the first global dataset of nonviolent campaigns that have employed bitcoin. Two nonviolent campaigns that utilised bitcoin are examined in detail: the Feminist Coalitionโs EndSARS protest and the Freedom Convoyโs Covid-19 mandate protest. Additionally, the study explores the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justiceโs use of bitcoin despite not facing financial censorship. Results: Both the Feminist Coalition and the Freedom Convoy adopted bitcoin immediately following financial censorship events, allowing them to add significant contributions to their funds. Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice experienced limited impact from using bitcoin. The results suggest that bitcoin has supported nonviolent campaigns, particularly in response to financial censorship. Conclusion: This study shows how (a) nonviolent campaigns have used bitcoin against financial censorship, for private donations, and for alternative means for funding; (b) bitcoin is a nonviolent tool with many features and functions similar to previous nonviolent tools and tactics involving money; (c) bitcoin can be of great interest for human rights activists and NGOs, illustrating how misconceptions regarding its association with illegal activities should be reconsidered. On the contrary, this study illustrates how bitcoin enhances personal autonomy and serves as a form of resistance against financial censorship by enabling borderless, censorship-resistant, and permissionless transactions.
Georg Simmel depicts money as an evolving entity that will continue to evolve to a state of โperfect moneyโ disconnected from any external guarantor of value. This article examines some of the different approaches to substantial value underpinning money, suggesting that they represent different types of fictional underwriting. Money is then contrasted with cryptocurrency, suggesting that their respective value is not only derived from different fictions but from different standards of value as major and minor currency. This analysis suggests that far from evolving into a fully abstract and functional instrument for creating stable social relationships, the divergence in currencies and currency fictions is a force for overturning such โexpedientโ stability.
Abstract Decentralized finance, including cryptocurrency and other blockchain-based applications, promises participants benefits such as financial freedom, security, privacy, and wealth accumulation. More recently, it has also offered the promise of participation, lowering financial barriers, and empowermentโespecially to women, the poor, and those residing in the Global South. I argue that the rise of decentralized finance as an alternative development platform is explicitly gendered and calls for feminist analysis. I discuss how cryptocurrency-based approaches to development rest on foundations that are gendered, interacting with hierarchies of race/ethnicity and class. I also explore how they are part of a lineage of neoliberalism, leveraging neoliberal beliefs about entrepreneurialism, financial inclusion, and gender roles. The discussion further introduces the concept of neolibertarianism as an extension of neoliberal logics that advocates for bypassing states entirely in favor of private actors. The current analysis compares this new model of decentralized finance to similarly problematic development trends and assesses how it hasโas of yetโfailed to deliver on the promises of participation, lowering financial barriers, and empowerment. This analysis concludes with a call to action for feminist and critical scholars, encouraging further work on the topic.