Money Code Space: Hidden Power in Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Decentralisation [Paperback]

Following the catastrophic events of the 2008 global financial crisis, an anonymous hacker released Bitcoin to claw back power from commercial and central banks. Its underlying architecture, blockchain, is now championed for delivering a decentralised global economy--a world free from hierarchy and control.Money Code Spaceshatters these emancipatory claims by revealing acute geographies of power that lie behind blockchain networks. Drawing on first-hand experience in cryptocurrency communities and start-up companies from Silicon Valley to London, Jack Parkin untangles the complex web of culture, politics, and economics that truly drive decentralisation.Following the catastrophic events of the 2008 global financial crisis, an anonymous hacker released Bitcoin to claw back power from commercial and central banks. It quickly garnered an enthusiastic following who sought to forge a stable and democratic global economy--a world free from hierarchy and control. In their eyes, Bitcoin's underlying architecture, blockchain, hailed the dawn of decentralisation.Money Code Spaceshatters these emancipatory claims. In their place, Jack Parkin constructs a new framework for revealing the geographies of power that lie behind blockchain networks. Drawing on first-hand experience in cryptocurrency communities and start-up companies from Silicon Valley to London, Parkin untangles the complex web of culture, politics, and economics that truly drive decentralisation.AcknowledgmentsPrefaceIntroduction1. Pandora's Blocks2. Money/Code/Space3. Follow the Digital Thing4. Building the Future5. Programming Politics6. Grounding Cryptocurrencies7. Embedded Centralism8. Blueprinting BlockchainsConclusionAppendicesReferencesIndexJack Parkinis an Adjunct Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, where he researches the political economy of cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystems. His ethnographic work focuses on points of control³X