Ownership of cryptocurrencies features contrasting forms of mobilization. On one hand, it denotes association with a global crowd of unrelated individual investors, which expands as it attracts more members. On the other hand, it includes participation in grassroots communities, which are generally more insular. Crypto Crowds demonstrates how this tension generates political, economic and moral realities in different cultural and geographical contexts. Pioneering in its approach to cryptocurrency trading, this volume will inspire scholars interested in the sociality of decentralized business models, boom-and-bust cycles on the blockchain, libertarian utopias and other postmodern crowding phenomena.
Inhoudsopgave
Introduction
Matan Shapiro
Chapter 1. Towards Hyper-bitcoin-ization: Bitcoin Maximalism as Speculative Fiction
Bruno Campos Cardoso
Chapter 2. The Sociality of the Blockchain and the Appification of Money: Affordances of a New Paradigm for Crowds
Dimitrios Tsavelis
Chapter 3. Gambling Crowds as Crypto-Oracles? Bridging the Real and the Blockchain through Utopian Markets and Oracular Shenanigans
Anthony J. Pickles
Chapter 4. Affective Processes in Cryptocurrency Markets: An Exploration with Crowd Theory
Anna Vennonen
Chapter 5. Unstructured Simplicity: Understanding Collective Dynamics of Peer-to-Peer Networks, and the Concurrent Formation of Crypto-Communities
Mitchell Tuddenham
Conclusion
Matan Shapiro
Index
Over de auteur
Matan Shapiro is a Social Anthropologist currently researching synoptic surveillance and changing notions of alterity online as part of the ERC-funded SAMCOM Project at the department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London.