Embedded Centralism

Abstract

Drawing from ethnographic research conducted within the Silicon Valley cryptocurrency and blockchain industry, Chapter 7 provides an account of the situated frictions among varying stakeholders in high-technology culture. The clashing of libertarian anarchy and entrepreneurial profit-seeking are forced into a vision reminiscent of the Californian Ideology, contributing to tensions of a splintering community. Blockchain technology is symptomatic of this polarising worldview. As “radical” and “disruptive” start-up companies are absorbed into the embedded spatial ties of the surrounding economy, they become increasingly “normalised” by their investors at the same time as scaling to enrol more users within their platforms. This has the effect of funnelling financial practices on blockchains through proprietary software controlled by a small number of technocrats, who can be more easily regulated by nation-state jurisdictions. The entrepreneurial geographies of high-technology agglomeration industries thereby act as another spatial limitation to algorithmic decentralisation.