Visions of a techno-leviathan: The politics of the Bitcoin blockchain

Visions of a techno-leviathan: The politics of the Bitcoin blockchain.

[img]http://furtherfield.org/sites/furtherfield.org/files/olga_panades_massanet/02.ethereum-bitcoin-ft.jpg[/img]

http://furtherfield.org/features/articles/visions-techno-leviathan-politics-bitcoin-blockchain

Brett Scott examines the politics of the Bitcoin Blockchain and whether there will be a place for equality and democracy, as the power systems already in place begin to reshape new digital economies according to their own intentions.

“What has been introduced to the world is a method to create decentralised peer-validated time-stamped ledgers. That is a fancy way of saying it is a method for bypassing the use of centralised officials in recording stuff. Such officials are pervasive in society, from a bank that records electronic transactions between me and my landlord, to patent officers that record the date of new innovations, to parliamentary registers noting the passing of new legislative acts.”

Brett Scott is the author of The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money (Pluto Press: 2013). And writes for various publications, including The Guardian, Wired Mag and New Scientist, and commentate on issues like financial reform, cryptocurrency and peer-to-peer systems. he is also involved in projects related to alternative finance, financial activism, and economic justice, such as Action Aid, World Development Movement, Open Oil, The Finance Innovation Lab, and MoveYourMoney UK.