Abstract

The essay considers how Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies embody a desire for a purely virtual money and a secure and stable form of money. This seeming paradox encodes a politics that both embraces the force of the market and demarcates hierarchies in terms of access and of technical capacity, which are often then linked to social categories. In this way cryptocurrency becomes aligned with a reactionary or 'alt right' politics. The suggestion of the essay is we need to critically consider issues of mediation and grasp how the 'hybridity' of cryptocurrency is a political and social problem.