In blockchain we trust: Ideologies and discourses sustaining trust in bitcoin

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the discourses and ideologies that underpin trust in Bitcoin (BTC) as an algorithm-driven socio-technical system, raising critical questions about how trust is established and sustained in complex socio-technical assemblages. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of three significant events in the cryptocurrency, we identify two interconnected, yet sometimes contradictory, ideologies enacted through four discourses that construct specific subject positions to produce and maintain trust in Bitcoin. The first, technical sovereignty, reflects adherence to notions of technical utopianism. The second, which we term peer-to-peer neoliberalism, frames BTC as a political experiment rooted in the individualization of responsibility and risk. Our paper contributes to the existing literature by arguing that algorithm-driven technologies like BTC neither establish trust solely through their apparent technical neutrality and security nor simply replace traditional institutional mechanisms of governance, control, and interaction. Instead, they are enacted through discourses and material arrangements that require continuous maintenance. This maintenance relies on power relations enabled by these ideologies yet remains contingent upon the ongoing reinforcement of the ideologies themselves—rendering trust inherently precarious and always at risk. This insight shifts the analytical focus from the dominant emphasis in the literature on technical features, social arrangements, and user perceptions to the underlying ideological frameworks that shape these elements, as such.