The Politics of Cryptography: Bitcoin and The Ordering Machine

Summary

Peer production has often been described as a ‘third mode of production’, irreducible to State or market imperatives. The creation and organisation of peer projects allegedly take place without ‘managerial commands’ or ‘price signals’, without recourse to bureaucratic apparatuses or the logic of competitive markets. Instead, and mimicking the technical architectures upon which many peer projects are based, production is described as non-hierarchical and decentralised. Group dynamics are also commonly described as ‘flat’ and this is captured, of course, in the very notion of the ‘peer’. When tested against the realities of actual projects, however, such early conceptions of peer production are, at best, in need of further elaboration and qualification. At worst, they were always off the mark. Hierarchies persist in peer production, as does competition and market-like arrangements… html

PEER REVIEWED PAPERS

‘Karma, precious Karma!’ Karmawhoring on Reddit and the Front Page’s Econometrisation
by Annika Richterich html

The Paradoxes of Distributed Trust: Peer-to-Peer Architecture and User Confidence in Bitcoin
by Alexandre Mallard, Cécile Méadel and Francesca Musiani html

The Politics of Cryptography: Bitcoin and the Ordering Machines
by Quinn DuPont html

Reproducing Wealth Without Money, One 3D printer at a Time
by Johan Söderberg html

INVITED COMMENTS

Why Contractors Make More Money Than Employees
by Amir Taaki html

Can Bitcoin Compete with Money?
by Beat Weber html

Towards the Democratization of the Means of Monetization: The Three Competing Value Models Present Within Cognitive Capitalism
by Michel Bauwens html

Between Copyleft and Copyfarleft: Advance Reciprocity for the Commons
by Miguel Said Vieira & Primavera De Filippi html