Follow the Digital Thing

Acknowledging how Bitcoin is geographically contingent and diverse, the follow the thing research design outlined allows for tracing the connections between different aspects of its protocol that are practised by a multitude of people in various places. This is done by documenting traditional follow the thing work and explaining how knowledge can be gathered from such a technique before adapting this research process for the task at hand. The breakdown then shifts into sketching a specific yet malleable research method that harnesses the flexibility necessary for researching the complex political economies of Bitcoin and other blockchains. This multi-sited and multi-angled approach creates a partial but far-reaching account of algorithmic decetralisation.

Pandora’s Blocks

Chapter 1 opens the lid on Bitcoin so that all of its attributes, problems, and connotations come spilling out. At the same time, it pulls these disparate strands back into focus by outlining the many discrepancies examined in subsequent chapters. So while in some ways the chapter acts like a primer for cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and their political economies, the material laid out works to set up the book’s underlying argument: asymmetric concentrations of power inevitably form though processes of algorithmic decentralisation. In the process, a short history of Bitcoin introduces some of its key stakeholders as well as some of its core technical functions.

Conclusion

Summarising the book’s findings, algorithmic decentralisation is shown to be an inherent contradiction as spatial trajectories coalesce at different points around blockchain networks. This provides a starting point for understanding the economic geographies of distributed blockchain networks that, on one hand, are open for all to see and, on the other, work out of view underneath the surface of cryptographically concealed code. By following Bitcoin into different aspects of its network, its money/code/space is revealed to be a product of complex webs of humans and non-humans formed through cultural-economic practice as opposed to an autonomous machine world. In doing so, the Conclusion works to debunk the libertarian and liberatory claims of cryptocurrencies by illuminating modes of uneven power. It is argued: only by understanding these limitations can pathways be taken to building less inequitable, or at least sensationalist, blockchain forms.

Embedded Centralism

Drawing from ethnographic research conducted within the Silicon Valley cryptocurrency and blockchain industry, Chapter 7 provides an account of the situated frictions among varying stakeholders in high-technology culture. The clashing of libertarian anarchy and entrepreneurial profit-seeking are forced into a vision reminiscent of the Californian Ideology, contributing to tensions of a splintering community. Blockchain technology is symptomatic of this polarising worldview. As “radical” and “disruptive” start-up companies are absorbed into the embedded spatial ties of the surrounding economy, they become increasingly “normalised” by their investors at the same time as scaling to enrol more users within their platforms. This has the effect of funnelling financial practices on blockchains through proprietary software controlled by a small number of technocrats, who can be more easily regulated by nation-state jurisdictions. The entrepreneurial geographies of high-technology agglomeration industries thereby act as another spatial limitation to algorithmic decentralisation.

Money/Code/Space

Chapter 2 provides a theoretical discussion of money, code, and space to foreground the emergence of Bitcoin as a radical response to existing economic structures. Using the history of central banking and software production, Bitcoin is compared to traditional modes of centralised governance to outline some of the political context of algorithmic decentralisation. In doing so, the binary of centralised and decentralised is rendered reductive and thus impotent for describing digital networks because of the inescapable complexity inherent within them. Instead, the concept of obligatory passage points is adapted into a framework for understanding (de)centralisation in algorithmic networks. This provides an understanding of money/code/space that encapsulates the cultural and economic messiness of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology that can be used for bringing places of power to the forefront of related academic scholarship.

Blueprinting BlockchainsIntroduction

The final chapter dives deeper into the territory of spin-off blockchains offered as technological modes of organisation for decentralising a host of socioeconomic practices. Recent discussions of platform capitalism are used to critique claims that blockchains are an incorruptible mode of democratic governance. Instead, blockchain capitalism is offered as a more accurate transaction model where profit necessitates certain points of centralisation through dominant distributed ledger technologies. A close examination of blockchain typologies reveals the co-option of these architectures by the very centralised banking firms and governments they were initially designed to bypass. As financial giants and central banks design their own distributed ledgers to increase the efficiency of business practices and monetary policy, innovation from the disruptive edges is once again absorbed into “the centre” by the corporate/state powers that be.

Grounding Cryptocurrencies

Chapter 6 documents a more specific and exploratory follow the thing research technique to uncover the digital-material architecture of Bitcoin. Treating the Bitcoin code as both a text and material, a single bitcoin is followed through the decentralised protocol “from” Australia “to” the United States. By tracing the spatial relationships between miscellaneous paraphernalia that facilitate the transaction, from proprietary software to Bitcoin mining rigs, the chapter navigates the material culture of the Bitcoin blockchain. This involves opening up source code for inspection to uncover the functional performativity of the network. The spatial lens used reveals several material infrastructures such as undersea cables, data centres, pools of Bitcoin mines, active nodes, and third-party wallet software, that assemble to form operational modes of centralisation.

Programming Politics

Chapter 5 outlines the community of developers who have contributed to Bitcoin’s source code. Drawing from ethnographic data and existing political economy theorisations of cryptocurrencies, the governance of the Bitcoin codebase is understood through obligatory passage points found among key individuals and groups involved in the creation of Bitcoin. The consensus model for making changes to the Bitcoin software shows how code is bound up with political tensions that arise through coordinating geographies of production. Pressures between different stakeholders are exposed to show how a stagnation of decision-making in code development and the increased likeliness of the project forking as it scales demands degrees of centralisation at the architectural level of cryptocurrency design so actions can be resolved and implemented. The overall political framework for altering Bitcoin’s code is described as senatorial governance: a (de)centralised model where bureaucratic parties compete to change the monetary policy (codified rules) of the protocol.

Building the Future

The fourth chapter describes how technological decentralisation emerged with advancements in cryptography and acted as a political counterweight of resistance to the encroachment of centralised governments across (online) spaces. The decentralist worldview is shown to be rooted in the specific political geography of the West Coast of the United States that, during the latter half of the 20th century, became a crucible of counterculture and entrepreneurship. Fuelled by this vision, a monetarist desire to create fairer economies through algorithmic decentralisation gave rise to the advent of cryptocurrencies. The intersection and slippage of this technologically deterministic imaginary (preaching a freedom from hierarchy and control) with geographies of material practice is developed throughout following chapters.

Introduction

The Introduction contextualises the pursuit of algorithmic decentralisation within the contemporary landscape of cryptocurrencies and blockchains. It problematises these new distributed ledgers within the literatures of economic geography, software studies, and anthropology to outline the analytical scope of the book. A “follow-the-thing” method is briefly introduced to demonstrate the multi-dimensional approach used to understand Bitcoin and to help foreground the monograph’s interventions and outline the academic contribution. This research technique is supported by an epistemological claim: in order to understand blockchains stakeholders must pay close attention to how they are constantly being (re)made and performed on a daily basis. This focus involves separating ideologies of algorithmic decentralisation from how it actually plays out in practice.