Blockchains and the “Chains of Empire”: Contextualizing Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and Neoliberalism in Puerto Rico

Crandall, Jillian

doi:10.1080/17547075.2019.1673989

Cited by 41 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…In the engineering world of code, standardized rules translate into 16 Such are the neoliberal economics encoded in crypto-currency projects that some observers have started to argue that blockchain technologies are being introduced to intently advance the neoliberal agenda in the Global South. They call these efforts a "new form of crypto-colonialism" (see Crandall, 2019;Howson, 2020). algorithms programmed ex-ante (Rozas et al, 2018), before communities are even given the opportunity to articulate their priorities and idiosyncrasies.…”

Section: Conclusion: Democratic or Despotic Money?mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Route to Commons-Based Democratic Monies? Embedding the Governance of Money in Traditional Communal Institutions

Barinaga

2020

Front. Blockchain

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The financial crisis of 2008 resulted, among other, on a popular awareness that the monetary system was not working for the interest of the many. The blockchain technology that was launched soon after offered monetary activists and entrepreneurs a tool to re-imagine, re-claim and re-organize money along a vague ideal of a commons paradigm. A wave of monetary experimentation ensued that took a most concrete form in two entrepreneurial spaces: crypto-currencies with global ambitions and local currencies based on communal democracy. Seemingly distinct on the outset, both strands share a determination to develop a monetary system that serves the many. This has led participants on both sides to reach out toward each other. The article looks at one such attempt: the Sarafu community crypto-currencies in Kenya. These currencies are embedding the creation of money in traditional community savings groups. Using Eleanor Ostrom’s framework and building on interview and ethnographic material, the article identifies the economic logic of mutualization proper of the savings groups as one that transforms private assets (one’s savings) into a financial commons for the group. To build on this logic, the Sarafu model in-the-making is embedding the production and governance of the new community cryptocurrencies in these saving groups. In that doing, Sarafu has the potential to advance a new architecture of money. However, findings suggest that the standardization and automation of the new monetary rules through smart contracts impose neoliberal ideas that slipped into the code, risking the erosion of the very communal decision-making processes that made savings groups interesting anchors of a money commons in the first place.

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Section: Conclusion: Democratic or Despotic Money?mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Route to Commons-Based Democratic Monies? Embedding the Governance of Money in Traditional Communal Institutions

Barinaga

2020

Front. Blockchain

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“…The most effective means of engaging exploitative blockchain platforms is by supporting and enacting alternate techno-economic strategies, such as platform cooperatives, within and outside of blockchain. If any project, blockchain or otherwise, claims to be emancipatory, the foremost step is to abandon the claims of a technology as a starting point, and instead give autonomy and agency to local communities to design and manage their own future, rather than having outside interests, or technologies themselves, determine a future for them (Crandall, 2019). The crypto-colonial endeavors, explored throughout this commentary, remain ultimately about advancing capitalist forms of governance.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate Crises and Crypto-Colonialism: Conjuring Value on the Blockchain Frontiers of the Global South

Howson

2020

Front. Blockchain

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This commentary explores how climate crises are used to justify "crypto-colonialism," whereby blockchain technology is used to extract economic benefits from those suffering the scars of historic colonial expansion in the Global South. These benefits include land, labor, data and other resources needed to facilitate capital interests elsewhere. As with past neoliberal development agendas imposing structural economic reforms, the contemporary crypto-colonial exercises discussed here are driven in pursuit of a common good-to protect the global commons and improve people's lives. The paper explores how investors are drawn to the sustainable development frontiers-the code/spaces where crypto-colonial conjuring manifests. Blockchain is implicated within crypto-colonialism in three ways. Firstly, it plays into ongoing narratives of "green grabbing," where local claims to resources are liquidated for green investments. Secondly, the technology perpetuates North-South trade and investment inequalities, and thirdly, a new power asymmetry is enabled by the technology through data colonialism and surveillance capitalism. In reviewing the spaces where crypto-colonialism manifests, the paper argues that despite being distributed, technoecological fixes are never placeless. How people configure, use, and are impacted by blockchain platforms is geographically contingent.

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“…On the right, libertarians promote a market‐based approach to governance where the state plays a minimal role. In fact, some have argued that the politics of blockchain correspond with the aims of neoliberalism, including the emphasis on individual entrepreneurship, private property rights and free markets (Golumbia 2015; Crandall, 2019). Thus, a technology that facilitates a decentralized free market where individuals can exchange goods and services on a digital platform is the closest that libertarians can get to a stateless society.…”

Section: Good Governance or Governance For Good?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The literature discussing governance and blockchain has so far primarily focused on cryptocurrencies and fintech (e.g. Crandall, 2019; Golumbia, 2015). Yet the changed character of DLTs used in the humanitarian field gives rise to a different set of implications and questions requiring a more detailed analysis of use cases that fall outside of cryptocurrencies (Kewell et al, 2017).…”

Section: Good Governance or Governance For Good?mentioning

confidence: 99%

From Good Governance to Governance for Good: Blockchain for Social Impact

Seyedsayamdost

Vanderwal²

2020

J of Intl Development

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Agenda 2030 has triggered a phalanx of initiatives to expand the scale and scope of activities and actors addressing global challenges. One increasingly scrutinized area is the use of distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) in the fields of development and humanitarian aid. This paper examines three projects that have piloted DLT use cases, including cash‐based transfers to Syrian refugees by the World Food Programme; illegal child trafficking in Moldova by the United Nations Office for Project Services; and microlending to social enterprises in Brazil by Moeda. The paper explores the use of blockchain technology with a view to understanding its implications for governance. It argues that the decentralization and disintermediation associated with the blockchain are not a given outcome in the cases explored for this paper. Rather, the DLT projects under examination have centralizing tendencies that empower the state while replacing traditional intermediaries with new ones that have expertise in code and blockchain. The paper identifies limitations associated with DLT solutions and offers policy recommendations to enhance the use of DLTs to accelerate the achievement of the sustainable development goals. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Blockchains and the “Chains of Empire”: Contextualizing Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and Neoliberalism in Puerto Rico

Cited by 41 publications

References 28 publications

A Route to Commons-Based Democratic Monies? Embedding the Governance of Money in Traditional Communal Institutions

A Route to Commons-Based Democratic Monies? Embedding the Governance of Money in Traditional Communal Institutions

Climate Crises and Crypto-Colonialism: Conjuring Value on the Blockchain Frontiers of the Global South

From Good Governance to Governance for Good: Blockchain for Social Impact

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