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This thesis offers a critical investigation of the Bitcoin currency and the operation of its technical structure, i.e. blockchain technology. The main objective of the research is to identify and describe the specific power dynamics... more
This thesis offers a critical investigation of the Bitcoin currency and the operation of its technical structure, i.e. blockchain technology. The main objective of the research is to identify and describe the specific power dynamics performed by and through this digital phenomenon. “Power dynamics” are framed in this work largely in terms of authority and sovereignty. To structure an exploration of such dynamics, the narrative is overarched by four different notions of “utopia” —as paradox, ideal, no-place, and imagined governance— that address the following main questions always underpinned by the general inquiry on power: What is the Bitcoin Blockchain? Where is it located? How are power relations performed in it? And how are power relations modified in relation with previous institutional systems? The thesis addresses distinct notions of authority in Bitcoin through the observation of its historical, spatial, and organizational characteristics. It maps the techno-political emerge...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Tiziana Terranova draws attention to the necessity of questioning how algorithmically enabled automation works “in terms of control and monetization” and “what kind of time and energy” is being subsumed by it (Terranova 387).... more
Tiziana Terranova draws attention to the necessity of questioning how algorithmically enabled automation works “in terms of control and monetization” and “what kind of time and energy” is being subsumed by it (Terranova 387). Cryptocurrencies are payment technologies that automate the production of money-like tokens (Bergstra and Weijland) following algorithmic rules to maintain a fixed production rate. Different kinds of energy and residues, which are not always acknowledged, are involved in this process. Here I distinguish between two closely linked layers in the Bitcoin token production: first, an algorithmic layer, which contains the instructions and rules for the creation of bitcoins; second, a hardware layer, which performs and embodies the former. While these layers work together, I will argue that they enact their own kind of logics of energy and waste. I will begin at the more visible end of the production cycle, the hardware layer, where the definition of waste and energy ...
AbstractThis paper investigates ontological dimensions of the blockchain by asking what kind of socio-technical object bitcoin is. It discusses both blockchain's political qualities and the political forms enabled by its emergence. It... more
AbstractThis paper investigates ontological dimensions of the blockchain by asking what kind of socio-technical object bitcoin is. It discusses both blockchain's political qualities and the political forms enabled by its emergence. It first observes recent approaches to the ontology of money and the political qualities of the ledgers used by the current fractional reserve banking model. It then directs the same questions at blockchain technology. The paper discusses an ontology proposed by Ole Bjerg (2016) and argues in favour of a mixed-ontology approach to blockchains. It then questions the political qualities of the distributed ledger as a digital object and highlights the apparent absence of authority figures in the model. Finally, it argues that the political ontology of the blockchain can be framed as the displacement of authority from institutional actors into instrumental control of trust, in a dynamically distributed environment.
Research Interests:
Tiziana Terranova draws attention to the necessity of questioning how algorithmically-enabled automation works “in terms of control and monetization” and “what kind of time and energy” is being subsumed by it (Terranova 387).... more
Tiziana Terranova draws attention to the necessity of questioning how algorithmically-enabled automation works “in terms of control and monetization” and “what kind of time and energy” is being subsumed by it (Terranova 387). Cryptocurrencies are payment technologies that automate the production of money-like tokens (Bergstra and Weijland) following algorithmic rules to maintain a fixed production rate. Different kinds of energy and residues, which are not always acknowledged, are involved in this process. Here I distinguish between two closely linked layers in the Bitcoin token production: first, an algorithmic layer, which contains the instructions and rules for the creation of bitcoins; second, a hardware layer, which performs and embodies the former. While these layers work together, I will argue that they enact their own kind of logics of energy and waste. I will begin at the more visible end of the production cycle, the hardware layer, where the definition of waste and energy consumption is shared with many electronic devices; then I will trace back its algorithmic layer, which as I argue, follows a different logic.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Velasco discusses contemporary literature on Bitcoin and distinguish between technical and social research, in an effort to provide a basis for identifying native social structures within this digital assemblage. The chapter is... more
Velasco discusses contemporary literature on Bitcoin and distinguish between technical and social research, in an effort to provide a basis for identifying native social structures within this digital assemblage. The chapter is particularly interested in digital research sprouted from the technical affordances of digital objects, yet directed towards socio-political enquiries. With this as a guidance, Velasco develops indicators and a method to map some of the entities of the Bitcoin network on a geographical canvas. The chapter presents this method in detail, and discusses what it is able to show and what are its attached limitations. Ultimately, Velasco argues that many digital methods share unavoidable constraints for social research, embedded in their own digital objects: digital grammar, framework design intentions and epistemological clauses.
[NOTE: While I try to keep my publications open, this one is not available to share, not even as a pre-print. I'm sorry for this. A simplified version of some of the research presented is available at: https://pablorvg.wordpress.com/2015/10/15/a-glimpse-of-the-a-bitcoin-topography-ii/ ]
[NOTE: While I try to keep my publications open, this one is not available to share, not even as a pre-print. I'm sorry for this. A simplified version of some of the research presented is available at: https://pablorvg.wordpress.com/2015/10/15/a-glimpse-of-the-a-bitcoin-topography-ii/ ]
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
There is much to be said about monetary "appification": how it reconfigures hardware and infrastructures; how it realigns industries and industry players (banks, mobile network operators, software companies, merchants and so on), creating... more
There is much to be said about monetary "appification": how it reconfigures hardware and infrastructures; how it realigns industries and industry players (banks, mobile network operators, software companies, merchants and so on), creating new allegiances and competitors; how it is part of a privatisation of money-space; or, indeed, how it expands money’s materiality and augments its functionality (or not), while blurring the distinction between money as artefact and process or milieu, for example. In what follows, we limit ourselves to a discussion of what we see as the becoming experiential of money; that is, of money becoming subjected to specific design techniques and framings as experience.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Industry researchers and anthropologists in the ‘payment space’ are talking of a ‘Cambrian explosion of payments’.1The explosion is Cambrian, explains Bill Maurer, ‘in that new body forms, adaptations of existing structures, and novel... more
Industry researchers and anthropologists in the ‘payment space’ are talking of a ‘Cambrian explosion of payments’.1The explosion is Cambrian, explains Bill Maurer, ‘in that new body forms, adaptations of existing structures, and novel relationships in a variegating ecology of retail payment are coming into being all at once’.2 Readers with
an interest in the payment space are no doubt familiar with some of these ways to pay (or otherwise transfer), from M-PESA to Venmo, Bitcoin to Alipay, and while not all rely on the bundle of technologies we (still) call the phone, it is doubtful there would be talk of such an explosion without the prior explosion of these digital devices.
Part of what is happening with payments is a becoming-money-like of phones, of phones substituting for other money artefacts such as cash or card. Of course, it is by no means a straightforward substitution: the becoming-money-like of phones is equally a becoming-phone-like of money. And since the phone is always already a bundle or stack of technologies, what is happening with money and what that might
mean more generally in terms of (political) economy is anything but clear.
an interest in the payment space are no doubt familiar with some of these ways to pay (or otherwise transfer), from M-PESA to Venmo, Bitcoin to Alipay, and while not all rely on the bundle of technologies we (still) call the phone, it is doubtful there would be talk of such an explosion without the prior explosion of these digital devices.
Part of what is happening with payments is a becoming-money-like of phones, of phones substituting for other money artefacts such as cash or card. Of course, it is by no means a straightforward substitution: the becoming-money-like of phones is equally a becoming-phone-like of money. And since the phone is always already a bundle or stack of technologies, what is happening with money and what that might
mean more generally in terms of (political) economy is anything but clear.