Toward a labour geography of cryptocurrency: Place, pensions and protests

Abstract

This article argues that cryptocurrencies have a hidden, or “crypto”, labour geography. Workers and their institutions have been under theorized in the literature, despite playing an active, yet often contradictory, role in the (re)production of cryptocurrency. Drawing from labour geography, we turn to three issues where workers are producing crypto-landscapes in contradictory ways: labour’s promotion of cryptocurrency mining facilities in post-industrial communities; the role of financialization and pension fund investments in cryptocurrencies; and community struggles for dis/investment in crypto-mining and protests over its environmental implications. We highlight the contradictory relations between labour and capital in the production of crypto landscapes and the populist sentiments among workers that play a role in shaping their development.