Blockchain Papers

Mitchell Tuddenham

No abstract is available for this record.

Martin Tremčinský

No abstract is available for this record.

Marianna Fotaki, Hamid Foroughi

This article interrogates the idea of leadership in a decentralized organization, using Extinction Rebellion (XR) as a case study. Through close observation of this environmental movement, we problematize the notion of leaderless organizations and question whether the idea of a hierarchy- and power-free ‘decentralized organization’ is a fantasmatic endeavour. Psychoanalytic analysis of discussions between XR members following two disruptive actions during XR’s International Rebellion in October 2019 reveals that these actions temporarily provoked members to question the attainability and effectiveness of XR’s so-called ‘leaderless autonomous organization’. This article contributes to psychoanalytic studies of leadership and to the social movements literature and argues that the power relations present in any form of organized endeavour must be recognized in order to develop effective and democratic activism.

Fiona Allon

Blockchain technologies are central to what has been described as a new ‘smart social contract’. With blockchain, individual cryptographic identity becomes the basis for new forms of money and for a whole suite of restructured social, political and financial transactions. But what do these developments signal for feminist engagements with the money economy? The transparency and pseudonymity that the blockchain provides has been welcomed as a ‘feminist weapon’. But the decentralised technology also legitimises many longstanding assumptions of libertarianism, especially competitive individualism, naturalised social inequality and the stability of value associated with the gold standard. Drawing on popular culture texts, Goldfinger and The Mandibles, this article considers this history, examining the gendered, racialised and sexualised discursive practices that attend representations of gold along with the ‘metallism’ surrounding blockchain-based cryptocurrencies in the contemporary conjuncture. By claiming to represent non-negotiable certainty derived from technology/nature rather than social convention, the fantasy of fundamental value returns, together with related associations of essentialism and authenticity, but anchored in this new context in the technocratic authoritarianism of FinTech. This is part of the background for the ‘new libertarianism’ whose ascendency now overshadows the neoliberalism that has been the focus of critical attention for some decades.

Massimo Amato

No abstract is available for this record.

Matthew Bellinger

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2018

Nigel Dodd

Founded in 1994, Berghahn Books is an independent publisher of distinguished scholarly books and journals in the humanities and social sciences. Its program, which includes close to 40 journals and over 100 new titles a year, spans Anthropology, Migration & Refugee Studies, Geography, History, and Film Studies.

Eric Yao

One of the first paradoxes of Bitcoin was how the community would uphold Satoshi’s original vision and founding principles after its creation. Despite much recent scholarly discussion on the idea of Bitcoin, intellectual history of money, and optimistic, progressive historiography, little has been written to answer the question of whether Bitcoin has succeeded in its original vision. The article argues that Bitcoin has failed to remain civil libertarian, radically democratic, and equal and open due to community politics and an ensuing civil war over the block size debate and the future of the blockchain. In addition to drawing from two historicizations, Yap stone money and the Enlightenment, the article sources online social archives to support the thesis that various actions by the Bitcoin community during the civil war overturned and failed the original vision.

Joel Z. Garrod

Although it is still in early stages, many commentators have been quick to note the revolutionary potential of next-generation or Bitcoin 2.0 technology. While some have expressed fear that the widespread application of these technologies may engender the rise of a Terminator-style Skynet, others believe that it represents the coming of a decentralized autonomous society (DAS) in which humans are freed from centralized forms of power through the proliferation of distributed autonomous organizations or DAOs. Influenced by neoliberal theory that stresses privatization, open markets, and deregulation, Bitcoin 2.0 technologies are implicitly working on the assumption that 'freedom' means freedom from the state. This neglects, however, that within capitalist societies, the state can also provide freedom from the vagaries of the market by protecting certain things from commodification. Through an analysis of (1) class and the role of the state; (2) the concentration and centralization of capital; and (3) the role of automation, I argue that the vision of freedom that underpins Bitcoin 2.0 tech is one that neglects the power that capital holds over us in both organizing the structure of our lives, and informing our idea of what it means to be human. In neglecting these other forms of power, I claim that the DAS might be a far more dystopian development than its supporters comprehend, making possible societies that are commodities all the way down.

Ole Bjerg

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic payment system that operates as an independent currency. This paper is a philosophical investigation of the ontological constitution of Bitcoin. Using Slavoj Žižek’s ontological triad of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary, the paper distinguishes between three ideal typical theories of money: commodity theory, fiat theory, and credit theory. The constitution of Bitcoin is analysed by comparing the currency to each of these ideal types. It is argued that Bitcoin is commodity money without gold, fiat money without a state, and credit money without debt. In conclusion, it is suggested that Bitcoin poses an ideological challenge to conventional forms of money in so far as it not only provokes sedimented beliefs about money but also exposes the forms of exploitation, risk and even violence inherent in the existing system of state authorized credit money.

Jon Roffe

That ancient rhetorical trope, symbolic patricide, is alive and well in contemporary philosophy. One need look no further than the fate of Gilles Deleuze at the hands of those who amass beneath the plural banner of contemporary philosophy for proof of this. Of course the great, unavoidable irony is that the position of father is often only occupied post mortem, symbolic murder being at the same time the installation of this or that thinker at the head of yesterday’s table. I mean here simply that in the rush to stake new theoretical ground beyond ‘post-modernism’, hermeneutics and deconstruction, wild empiricism, correlationism — in sum, all of those avatars of imperialism our autochthonous fairy tales warn us about in such dire tones — Deleuze’s name comes to stand in for everything we must not anymore want or think, despite his demonstrable innocence in many regards. This prosecutory fervor leads to critical attacks that engage very little with the work itself, unconsciously exemplifying Walter Benjamin’s ninth thesis for the critic: ‘Polemics mean to destroy a book in a few of its sentences. The less it has been studied the better’ (2008: 67). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Bill Maurer, Taylor C. Nelms, Lana Swartz

This paper investigates the semiotics of Bitcoin, an electronic cash system that uses decentralized networking to enable irreversible payments. For enthusiasts, Bitcoin provides an alternative to currencies and payment systems that are seen to threaten users' privacy, limit personal liberty, and undermine the value of money through state and corporate oversight. Bitcoin's promise lies in its apparent capacity to resolve these concerns not through regulatory institutions or interpersonal trust, but through its cryptographic protocols. We characterize this semiotics as a “practical materialism” and suggest it replays debates about privacy, labor, and value.

James K. Anderson, Kiran Bharthapudi, Hao Cao

In this essay, Foucault's concept “of other spaces” – or, heterotopia – is used to examine the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in the context of systemic crisis. Neoliberalism is marked by innovations that amplify and accelerate contradictions, unfolding the false utopia of finance capitalism. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) helped hyper-financialize the economy, enrich banksters and extend inequalities. Conversely, high-tech developments allow for decentralized decision-making and more direct democracy, paralleling the ethics of OWS. New ICTs compress TimeSpace, opening doors for empathic connections, generating conditions for elevation of collective superstructural consciousness. This paper explores how these conditions create – and are recreated by – heterotopic spaces. Drawing on Foucault's method of heterotopology we throw light on the potential of OWS to prefigure another world, analyzing endeavors to promote cooperative autonomy, and raise consciousness in and through mediated environments, always contested, ever in flux, and inevitably over-(but never pre-)determined.