Money Code Space: Hidden Power in Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Decentralisation

by Jack Parkin

Overview

Following the catastrophic events of the 2008 global financial crisis, an anonymous hacker released Bitcoin to claw back power from commercial and central banks. It quickly garnered an enthusiastic following who sought to forge a stable and democratic global economy—a world free from hierarchy and control. In their eyes, Bitcoin's underlying architecture, blockchain, hailed the dawn of decentralisation.

Money Code Space shatters these emancipatory claims. In their place, Jack Parkin constructs a new framework for revealing the geographies of power that lie behind blockchain networks. Drawing on first-hand experience in cryptocurrency communities and start-up companies from Silicon Valley to London, Parkin untangles the complex web of culture, politics, and economics that truly drive decentralisation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780197515082
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/17/2020
Series:	Oxford Studies in Digital Politics
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jack Parkin is an Adjunct Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, where he researches the political economy of cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystems. His ethnographic work focuses on points of control in digital networks, analysing software development models, technical infrastructure, and start-up industries. He also provides consultancy services for automation and distributed ledger solutions internationally.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface

Introduction
1. Pandora's Blocks
2. Money/Code/Space
3. Follow the Digital Thing
4. Building the Future
5. Programming Politics
6. Grounding Cryptocurrencies
7. Embedded Centralism
8. Blueprinting Blockchains
Conclusion

Appendices
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"...among the many books on bitcoin, this is one of the most valuable..." — J. Brzezinski, McHenry County College, CHOICE

"In this fascinating book, Jack Parkin details the socio-spatial trajectories and political economies of blockchain cryptocurrencies. Through an insightful multi-site ethnography he explains with compelling conceptual clarity the materialities and spatialities of emerging decentralised financial architectures. Engagingly written, this is a must-read for anyone interested in the tangled relationship of money, code, and space." — Rob Kitchin, Maynooth University

"Money Code Space gives us an in-depth analysis of particular types of digital capabilities — specifically, powerful tools that can become dangerous instruments. Jack Parkin's book takes us well beyond the more familiar descriptions of blockchain and its cousins." — Saskia Sassen, Columbia University

"Jack Parkin's book expertly integrates the fields of financial and digital geographies through the compelling case studies of the cryptocurrency of Bitcoin and the blockchain technology supporting it. From these strong empirics, Parkin makes a strong contribution to advancing and integrating theories of finance, code/space, software/data studies, and money. It is an excellent piece of scholarship and highly recommended for those studying the construction of financial and digital spaces and how the visions and dreams encoded in software are negotiated and materialized in economic practices. This book highlights the constructed, contested and political nature of so-called "neutral" technologies and moreover demonstrates how a technology designed to be the ultimate in decentralization, nevertheless relies on centralization in order to function." — Matthew Zook, University of Kentucky

From the Publisher