The Politics of Bitcoin
Software as Right-Wing Extremism
David Golumbia
Since its introduction in 2009, Bitcoin has been widely promoted as a digital currency that will revolutionize everything from online commerce to the nation-state. Yet supporters of Bitcoin and its blockchain technology subscribe to a form of cyberlibertarianism that depends to a surprising extent on far-right political thought.
Golumbia, in his small but important way, is helping wake us to the falsity of our perceived neutrality.
One Flew East
Since its introduction in 2009, Bitcoin has been widely promoted as a digital currency that will revolutionize everything from online commerce to the nation-state. Yet supporters of Bitcoin and its blockchain technology subscribe to a form of cyberlibertarianism that depends to a surprising extent on far-right political thought. The Politics of Bitcoin exposes how much of the economic and political thought on which this cryptocurrency is based emerges from ideas that travel the gamut, from Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises to Federal Reserve conspiracy theorists.
Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.
$10.00 paper ISBN 978-1-5179-0180-6
$4.95 ebook ISBN 978-1-4529-5381-6
77 pages, 5 x 7, 2016
Forerunners: Ideas First Series
David Golumbia teaches in the English department and the Media, Art, and Text PhD program at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Golumbia, in his small but important way, is helping wake us to the falsity of our perceived neutrality.
One Flew East
This book is a very readable and valuable monograph which combines sound historical research with insightful analysis. All concerned citizens should read this book, which is an essential resource for understanding the true stakes of current technological hyperbole.
Newsclick
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De Groene Amsterdammer: Blockchain in the polder
Meaning the Software: A review of The Politics of Bitcoin
Motherboard: There Are No Guardrails on Our Privacy Dystopia
If tech is going to infiltrate, influence, and shape all of society, it is unacceptable for tech and pure market forces to decide the limits of the surveillance state.
De Groene Amsterdammer: Blockchain in the polder
Society embraces 'blockchain', the disruptive technology behind money alternatives such as bitcoin. But do we also embrace the radical ideals and assumptions behind them?
Meaning the Software: A review of The Politics of Bitcoin
David Golumbia, in his small but important way, is helping wake us to the falsity of our perceived neutrality. Our impartiality. Our objectivity.
Finmag: Bitcoin and the government are friends
Golumbia explores the ideological starting points of the most visible part of criminals: hence the aging resistance to central banking and the state as such, to centralization and inflation. He well reminds that bitcoin is centralized in its way, with roughly half of all value being held by thousands of owners who can manipulate the market with sophisticated business tricks, and that bitcoin has experienced inflation or hyperinflation several times.
Metamute | Chump Change: Decrypting Bitcoin & Blockchain
Artists and academics are jumping on the blockchain bandwagon and talking up the potential for cryptocurrency and distributed ledgers to mitigate austerity capitalism. Attractive as techno-monetary fixes may seem they come at a dangerous ideological cost, argues Andrew Osborne reviewing David Golumbia’s The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism