Markets Update: Cryptocurrency Market Cap Commands $46 Billion
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Bill Maurer is an anthropologist at the University of California, Irvine. He is one of a few scientists of the Arts who researched virtual currencies like Bitcoin. In this interview he explains what Bitcoin can tell us about money in the early 21th century — and why he finds it weird to think that money needs to be a commodity. How does this stick together? What question do the Arts have for Bitcoin?
Almost all of my research was about law and economy. I was looking at finance, how the offshore economy was received in local communities in the Caribbean, and that got me interested thinking more deeply about money. How do people understand money? How do they use money to express ideologies or to foster relationships? When Bitcoin came along, I christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange in the middle of a study christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange mobile phones and money in sub-Saharan Africa.
We were thinking about the implications of mobile phones on money. How do digital transactions change the conversations about mobile money, not in terms of security or encryption, but more in terms of cultural effects? And then came Bitcoin. I was sitting in a cafe, working on something else with my students. The first questions were: And why is it so interesting christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange people? We talked to technologists and scientists and found out that Bitcoin promises a future of nearly real time transactions, but in fact it will never be as fast as credit cards.
And yet it is something a lot of people are interested in and invested money in. What can Bitcoin tell us about money in the early 21th century? Why are people talking about money again? Why in this specific historical moment had money become an issue again? How was Bitcoin capturing so much attention in this moment in the history of money. One of the most disturbing experiences most people make with Bitcoin is that nobody is neutral. Everybody seems to be ideologically and emotionally involved.
Did you find an explanation why? Yes, I feel the same. The high level of emotional investment tells you something about the fact that money right now is being profoundly ungrounded. It is up for question. But with the rise christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange the Internet and mobile and social computing, people are starting to think, if money is just data, just bits and bytes, can we remake money?
How can we make it different? How can we think about it and value it? There have been several different ways of thinking about money, different theories. Bitcoin reflects one of them. For several centuries the state was in the possession of the means of money making, but with the Internet, we can do it ourselves. This is not an idea Bitcoin brought into the world, it has existed for some time. Do you know the LETS movement?
Yes, wikipedia confirms christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange. Bitcoin is very similar to them. The LETS usually depend on a central account keeper. Bitcoin is similar in that it depends on accounts-keeping, but it eliminates the need for a central authority keeping track of transactions.
On the other side, what is also interesting with Bitcoin, is that it continues a long history of thinking money as a natural commodity like gold. This line of thought thinks that money to be valuable it needs to be a commodity christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange it needs to be scarce.
In the history of money this is a weird decision. In the west we also have over the centuries the imagination of money as a natural commodity. You think money as a commodity is not a realistic option, christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange a wish and imagination? Yes, it goes back to our origin story of money in the west.
So the idea is that we need some kind christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange standard of value everyone can agree to. In diesem Beispiel geht es um Bier. Pictographs Recording the Allocation of Beer. It was not used as much as people think. The Babylonians mostly recorded transactions on tablets, without the need for gold and silver.
They used a system of receipts, without needing money. They did start valuing this things with silver only because silver was brought to temples and useful for this purpose.
Money is really more about accounting than about having a natural commodity to use in exchange. Like the early Babylonians used. I think that Bitcoin is really a store of money. That money needs to be scarce however is an idea from goldbugs, you know the term?
Bitcoin is money for digital goldbugs. But the blockchain itself is pretty interesting. Goldbugs is a term for people that only trust scarce resources like gold but not fiat-money. Mostly they are rooted in libertarian ideologies, which are also strong in Bitcoin communities. Christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange you research the connection between libertarians and Bitcoin?
Bitcoin started with people imagining money without a state. That is a libertarian idea. Then it met the idea that the Internet can unleash a world without a state, which is silly, because the Internet is a product of the state. We are in a historical time where libertarians are on the rise, they gain traction in a generalized discourse about theories of economic crisis.
This may be in the US. In Europe it seems more that some kind of right-wing gain traction, but they are not necessarily bound to libertarian ideas. In Germany the new right-wing are connected to libertarian ideas, while in France the Front National is more socialistic …. In the US we have a strong movement for libertarian ideas as christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange result of explanations of the economic crisis, what is crazy, since it was a result of the free market ….
How about other ideologies in Bitcoin communities? Is it only libertarianism, or do you see other strong ideologies? I guess libertarians are really the dominant strain of participants in the Bitcoin world. But there also christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange people re-imagining property itself, like Ethereum, and this seems related to but different from the libertarianism of others in the Bitcoin communities.
There is also a more communitarian strain. The ideologies are not necessarily restricted to libertarianism, but in general I would say, Bitcoin reflects the imaginations of the Internet: This ignores the fact that christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange build things not by ourselves, but through Google and Facebook and internet service providers and the like, and these companies in fact support the state and are supported by it.
People know this but they still think and say, yes, we are directly connected to one another through the Internet and we can do it—whatever we want—ourselves. Fertig, das wars, mehr nicht. Viele Leute denken, ich habe kein Recht jemand anderes auszurauben, es sei denn, ich mache alle 4 Jahre ein Kreuz gebe anderen das Recht, was ich selber nicht habe. As it stands at the present, it has a virtual value much like gold—a price is put upon it and manipulated by rarety.
Eventually, this value will change to another form. I see it becoming a form of talent—a form of value someone has to offer.
A value that is NOT accumulated by speculation, but by the need of personal output. So, each person will have a certain value for an amount of talent in return.
Much like an IOU. This form of exchange will have to have a secure wallet, much like a Bitcoin Wallet for goods purchased. What I find disturbing about the Christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange is its virtuality.
And eventually will PUFF. A talent has real value, and christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange with a determined talent in exchange. Talents of course will not christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange in our present social makeup.
We are too tied to tangibles. Christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange see this in the elderly. It will be hard for them to liquidate currency in christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange for goods. I see it happening more in the young. They like christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange money.
The next generation will love virtual bits. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are christoph bergmann bitcoin exchange using your Twitter account.
