- Description
- 1 online resource (xvi, 285 pages) : illustrations.
- Summary
- "Newly emerging cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology present a challenging research problem in the field of digital politics and economics. Bitcoin-the first widely implemented cryptocurrency and blockchain architecture-seemingly separates itself from the existing territorial boundedness of nation state money via a process of algorithmic decentralisation. Proponents declare that the utilisation of cryptography to advance financial transactions will disrupt the modern centralised structures by which capitalist economies are currently organised: corporations, governments, commercial banks, and central banks. Allegedly, software can create a more stable and democratic global economy; a world free from hierarchy and control. In Money/Code/Space, Jack Parkin debunks these utopian claims by approaching distributed ledger technologies as a spatial and social problem where power forms unevenly across their networks. First-hand accounts of online communities, open source software governance, infrastructural hardware operations, and Silicon Valley start-up culture are used to ground understandings of cryptocurrencies in the 'real world'. Consequently, Parkin demonstrates how Bitcoin and other blockchains are produced across a multitude of tessellated spaces from which certain stakeholders exercise considerable amounts of power over their networks. While money, code, and space are certainly transformed by distributed ledgers, algorithmic decentralisation is rendered inherently paradoxical because it is predicated upon centralised actors, practices, and forces"--
- Series Statement
- Oxford studies in digital politics
- Uniform Title
- Money code space (Online)
- Alternative Title
- Money code space (Online)
- Subject
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Access (note)
- Access restricted to authorized users.
- Contents
- Pandora's Blocks -- Money/Code/Space -- Follow the Digital Thing -- Building the Future -- Programming Politics -- Grounding Cryptocurrencies -- Embedded Centralism -- Blueprinting Blockchains -- Conclusion -- Appendix -- Notes -- References -- Index.
- LCCN
- 2020004730
- OCLC
- ssj0002453684
- Author
Parkin, Jack.
- Title
Money code space [electronic resource] : hidden power in bitcoin, blockchain, and decentralisation / Jack Parkin.
- Imprint
New York : Oxford University Press, [2020]
- Series
Oxford studies in digital politics
- Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Access
Access restricted to authorized users.
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