Money Code SpacePub Date : 2020-09-17DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0006
Jack Parkin
{"title":"Programming Politics","authors":"Jack Parkin","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 5 outlines the community of developers who have contributed to Bitcoin’s source code. Drawing from ethnographic data and existing political economy theorisations of cryptocurrencies, the governance of the Bitcoin codebase is understood through obligatory passage points found among key individuals and groups involved in the creation of Bitcoin. The consensus model for making changes to the Bitcoin software shows how code is bound up with political tensions that arise through coordinating geographies of production. Pressures between different stakeholders are exposed to show how a stagnation of decision-making in code development and the increased likeliness of the project forking as it scales demands degrees of centralisation at the architectural level of cryptocurrency design so actions can be resolved and implemented. The overall political framework for altering Bitcoin’s code is described as senatorial governance: a (de)centralised model where bureaucratic parties compete to change the monetary policy (codified rules) of the protocol.","PeriodicalId":357064,"journal":{"name":"Money Code Space","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121910751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Money Code SpacePub Date : 2020-09-17DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0008
Jack Parkin
{"title":"Embedded Centralism","authors":"Jack Parkin","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0008","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":357064,"journal":{"name":"Money Code Space","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125498330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Money Code SpacePub Date : 2020-09-17DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0010
J. Parkin
{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"J. Parkin","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Summarising the book’s findings, algorithmic decentralisation is shown to be an inherent contradiction as spatial trajectories coalesce at different points around blockchain networks. This provides a starting point for understanding the economic geographies of distributed blockchain networks that, on one hand, are open for all to see and, on the other, work out of view underneath the surface of cryptographically concealed code. By following Bitcoin into different aspects of its network, its money/code/space is revealed to be a product of complex webs of humans and non-humans formed through cultural-economic practice as opposed to an autonomous machine world. In doing so, the Conclusion works to debunk the libertarian and liberatory claims of cryptocurrencies by illuminating modes of uneven power. It is argued: only by understanding these limitations can pathways be taken to building less inequitable, or at least sensationalist, blockchain forms.","PeriodicalId":357064,"journal":{"name":"Money Code Space","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130940709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Money Code SpacePub Date : 2020-09-17DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0009
Jack Parkin
{"title":"Blueprinting BlockchainsIntroduction","authors":"Jack Parkin","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"The final chapter dives deeper into the territory of spin-off blockchains offered as technological modes of organisation for decentralising a host of socioeconomic practices. Recent discussions of platform capitalism are used to critique claims that blockchains are an incorruptible mode of democratic governance. Instead, blockchain capitalism is offered as a more accurate transaction model where profit necessitates certain points of centralisation through dominant distributed ledger technologies. A close examination of blockchain typologies reveals the co-option of these architectures by the very centralised banking firms and governments they were initially designed to bypass. As financial giants and central banks design their own distributed ledgers to increase the efficiency of business practices and monetary policy, innovation from the disruptive edges is once again absorbed into “the centre” by the corporate/state powers that be.","PeriodicalId":357064,"journal":{"name":"Money Code Space","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130032028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Money Code SpacePub Date : 2020-09-17DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0007
Jack Parkin
{"title":"Grounding Cryptocurrencies","authors":"Jack Parkin","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197515075.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 6 documents a more specific and exploratory follow the thing research technique to uncover the digital-material architecture of Bitcoin. Treating the Bitcoin code as both a text and material, a single bitcoin is followed through the decentralised protocol “from” Australia “to” the United States. By tracing the spatial relationships between miscellaneous paraphernalia that facilitate the transaction, from proprietary software to Bitcoin mining rigs, the chapter navigates the material culture of the Bitcoin blockchain. This involves opening up source code for inspection to uncover the functional performativity of the network. The spatial lens used reveals several material infrastructures such as undersea cables, data centres, pools of Bitcoin mines, active nodes, and third-party wallet software, that assemble to form operational modes of centralisation.","PeriodicalId":357064,"journal":{"name":"Money Code Space","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131944884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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