‘Staging’ divinatory economic performances: Comparing startup and MLM cryptocurrency projects

Abstract

This article offers ‘stages’, an original device, to sharpen the focus on a particular divinatory economic performance: the folding of imagined profitable futures into the present to create the impression that profitable futures are imminent or already realized. Drawing on ethnographic material from the startup and multi‐level marketing (MLM) cryptocurrency sectors, and utilizing ‘stages’ as a concept/pun – in the spatial and temporal sense – I show how economic performances must be ‘staged’ to convince people to invest. ‘Staging’ economic performances leads to creating a physical space of heightened excitement, expertise, and a temporal period that is experienced as urgent where one must think in an innovative way to bring about a profitable future. Under these conditions, ‘stages’ reveals how the line between a legitimate and an illegitimate project becomes indistinguishable to those on the ground. Doing your ‘due diligence’ to discern between the two is anything but straightforward. Despite claims by Euro‐American financial elites that startups and MLMs are polar opposites, this article demonstrates their striking similarity. More broadly, ‘stages’ reveals how economic performances gain efficacy, travel beyond specific sites, and come to act on people.