Browsing by Subject "cryptocurrency"

Cryptocurrency emerged in response to a growing distrust in traditional financial systems, representing an attempt to re-imagine money on a global level. Unlike previous alternative currency movements, cryptocurrencies allowed greater scalability, portability, security and ‘more than money’ use-cases. This led to widespread adoption and narratives of cryptocurrency’s revolutionary potential. Since the invention of Bitcoin in 2008 more than 23,000 cryptocurrencies have been traded, along with the development of non-fungible tokens, decentralised autonomous organisations, and ‘metaverses’, which make up the new layer of internet infrastructure enthusiasts call ‘Web 3’. Alongside talk of cryptocurrencies’ speculative appeal, are visions of a blockchain-supported economy that are about much more than money: representing new forms of operating, living and imagining value. Yet others remain perplexed by the way value seemingly arises ‘out of nothing’. This thesis takes cryptocurrency as an opportunity to explore the social construction of value. Through seven months of fieldwork online and in Helsinki in 2022, it provides an ‘on the ground’ view from the cryptoscene. This work explores users’ motivations and understandings of value, their subjectivities, ideals and values, and the social relations that hold everything together. The study contributes findings that emphasise cryptocurrencies’ entanglement with ideological beliefs, values and ethical projects, suggesting cryptocurrency use extends beyond individual rational economization. Analysing ideals from the scene, the work highlights new labours and ethics which inform users’ subjectivities, encouraging self-responsibility, rationality and discipline. Despite the scene’s rhetoric of individualism, communities and social relations are found to play an important role in mediating trust and value, working to re-embed a notion of ‘the social’.