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The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism

David Golumbia

3.55 · Rating details · 99 Ratings · 16 Reviews

Since its introduction in 2009, Bitcoin has been widely promoted as a digital currency that will revolutionize everything from online commerce to the nation-state. Yet supporters of Bitcoin and its blockchain technology subscribe to a form of cyberlibertarianism that depends to a surprising extent on far-right political thought. The Politics of Bitcoin exposes how much of ...more

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Paperback, 100 pages

Published September 26th 2016 by Univ Of Minnesota Press

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Nov 15, 2016 Nelson Rosario rated it really liked it

Shelves: bitcoin

Ah! Finally, a decent counterweight to bitcoin euphoria. The author comes at bitcoin from the domain of political theory (one of my first loves) to ruthlessly attack the economic and political underpinnings of bitcoin. Some of the attacks hurled by the author miss the mark, but ultimately the book is a valuable addition to the growing literature. If you are interested in bitcoin AND political theory this is required reading.

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Jul 09, 2017 Alex rated it liked it

Shelves: culture, politics, technology

This was an interesting counterpoint to my real-life experience with Bitcoin / cryptocurrency developers and enthusiasts. I think some of the generalizations here are a bit too sweeping, but this felt fairly well-researched on the internet culture side, if less so with respect to the actual technology. The latter point was the major weakness of this essay, as discussion focused heavily on analysis of economic definitions of inflation / deflation, etc., and hardly at all on what kinds of potentia ...more

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Apr 16, 2018 Mehrsa rated it it was amazing

Fantastic little screed/manifesto on the political myths behind bitcoin. The economism is derived from Hayek and Friedman, but the whole bitcoin cult relies on some pretty wacky Fed conspiracy theories. The claims of bitcoin are not only self-contradicatory (it will be adopted by everyone, but it will overthrow the state. It will be unregulated, but does not need to be trusted, it will go up in value, but it's not meant to be an investment), but really the problem is that the things that bitcoin ...more

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Dec 10, 2016 Vuk Trifkovic rated it really liked it

Very important pamphlet. So much to unpack at Bitcoin front and an excellent model for analysing other technologies.

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Jan 29, 2018 Mark Jeftovic rated it did not like it

Far-right extremism is a political ideology that incorporates neo-Naziism, fascism, xenophobia and racism - ideals which Golumbia asserts in this book are "very literally coded into the [Bitcoin] software itself".

However, the entire book is filled with logical fallacies where the author arbitrarily declares any criticism of central banking or the current monetary system, or any diverging opinion from his deeply misinformed take on "conventional economics" to be, by definition "right wing extremi Far-right extremism is a political ideology that incorporates neo-Naziism, fascism, xenophobia and racism - ideals which Golumbia asserts in this book are "very literally coded into the [Bitcoin] software itself".

However, the entire book is filled with logical fallacies where the author arbitrarily declares any criticism of central banking or the current monetary system, or any diverging opinion from his deeply misinformed take on "conventional economics" to be, by definition "right wing extremism", "conspiracy theory" or both. He then tangentially connects these numerous fallacious inferences to Bitcoin. (In a 62-page book the phrase “right-wing” occurs 78 times, “extremism” and “extremist” occur 32 and 21 times respectively).

The book contains several, significant factual errors: example Golumbia attempts to demonstrate how use of Bitcoin facilitates criminality by citing it's use in making donations to Wikileaks during the 2010 blockade of their payment providers. Golumbia states rather categorically that "it is a violation of U.S law" to donate to Wikileaks and that is totally and utterly false.

He attempts to debunk the generally observed phenomenon of inflation and it's erosion of purchasing power as "conspiracy theory", by claiming currency units can retain their purchasing power via investment returns - completely confusing nominal returns on assets with purchasing power of currency units.

While the author decries prominent Bitcoin authors such as Andreas Antonopoulos "Mastering Bitcoin" book "includes several substantial economic discussions in which extremist views are proffered, without attribution, as if they are simply commonsense analyses of relatively uncontroversial subjects" - his own book, this one, does exactly this nearly it's entire length.

The book concludes rather abruptly, reiterating that right-wing extremism is coded "very literally into the software" of Bitcoin itself, yet nowhere in the book has Golumbia actually demonstrated any of his claims.

I find this book troubling on two fronts: 1) it was never fact checked, nor I suspect reviewed by anybody with a semblance of economic literacy; and 2) the author is an associate professor at a university. Yikes. ...more

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Apr 29, 2018 Jo added it

A great introduction to Bitcoin and to the discourse surrounding it. It's very short, and I could have done with some just slightly more detailed analysis of and counterarguments to libertarian economics. Sometimes I think Golumbia has a little too much respect for me as a reader: there's a tendency to show that some statement which presents itself as a fairly technical, neutral, uncontroversial idea is actually linked to extreme right-wing philosophy, and then just leave it at that.

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Jan 16, 2018 Professor Shredder rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in Bitcoin, blockchain, and the political implications of disruptive technology. It's an important read, though at times it was repetitive and left me wanting more.

The author does a good job of explaining the history and roots of blockchain tech, and Bitcoin in particular. His argument seems to have two parts. The first is that Bitcoin tech was created by people with libertarian and right-wing leanings. This part of the argument is interesting hi ...more

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Sep 30, 2017 Spoust1 rated it liked it

A short, helpful book that points out how many of the ideas behind Bitcoin are tied to right-wing conspiracy theories and conservative economics. However, some more substantial discussion of economic theory would have improved the book. Much of the argument consists in simply showing that Bitcoin's ideology comes almost entirely from non-mainstream conservative sources. An important but easily made point. Leaving things there is problematic because it means implicitly accepting mainstream econom ...more

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Feb 02, 2018 Bob Anderson rated it really liked it

An important caveat here: David’s not talking about Right-Wing as in MAGA hats and white nationalism, he’s talking about it in the sense of “government small enough to drown in a bathtub” and other more libertarian-adjacent ideas. It’s a fairly short and focused book that does a great job of pinning the ideas motivating major cryptocurrency thinkers to that libertarian tradition. A major point in here is that many of the motivating ideas of bitcoiners are assumptions from a far-right perspective ...more

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Jan 06, 2018 Meredith Avila rated it liked it

Shelves: 2018

Well sourced and a good insight into the political underpinnings of Bitcoin and cyberlibertarian ideology for people with slightly more than rudimentary knowledge of Bitcoin / blockchain. It's a decent cautionary tale for those who may be caught up in the zeitgeist of cryptocurrency speculation and tech worship in general that turns smart folks into people who will trust corporations to have their best interest at heart or even buy into age old conspiracy theories. For such a short book it's a t ...more

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Aug 15, 2018 Hannes rated it did not like it

It is in interesting introduction to US right wing activists and their love for Bitcoin. At the end the author claims that right wing ideas are "coded" into Bitcoin. He doesn't care to explain that a bit, actually in the same way as he doesn't care to understand Bitcoin itself - his few lines of explanations are simply wrong and many of his economic statements more than questionable.

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Mar 19, 2018 Trevor Kroger rated it it was amazing

Come meet the new John Birch Society, same as the old one.

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Jan 22, 2018 Samuel rated it liked it

good to read a different perspective but still got to mull this over

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May 05, 2018 Lewis Birchon rated it really liked it

A super-short analysis of the politics behind Bitcoin and the movement for decentralised digital currencies.

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Jun 28, 2018 Raven Onthill rated it really liked it

This small book – perhaps 35,000 words, almost a pamphlet – places the Bitcoin bubble in political and economic context. The author, Professor David Golumbia of Virginia Commonwealth University, is a former software engineer and financier, turned academic.

The Politics of Bitcoin is largely an overview of the marketing of Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies which, Golumbia finds, is full of right-wing conspiracism and financial flummery. Theories about the evils of central banking, sometimes an This small book – perhaps 35,000 words, almost a pamphlet – places the Bitcoin bubble in political and economic context. The author, Professor David Golumbia of Virginia Commonwealth University, is a former software engineer and financier, turned academic.

The Politics of Bitcoin is largely an overview of the marketing of Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies which, Golumbia finds, is full of right-wing conspiracism and financial flummery. Theories about the evils of central banking, sometimes anti-semitic, and the evils of government regulation are rife. He also points out that as money, so far Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies so far are failures.

The book provides an introduction to Bitcoin and blockchain for people unfamiliar with those, and the mainstream economic understanding of money, for people unfamiliar with that.

Money, by the usual economic definition, is “a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account.” Golumbia points out that Bitcoin is at most useful as a medium of exchange. Even so, Bitcoin is only used in a few markets, mostly those for illegal goods and services. Bitcoin is extremely volatile, and because of this is not useful as a store of value and a unit of account; as with any volatile currency one has to spend it quickly, lest its value be destroyed by the shifting market. So far, the main success of Bitcoin is as medium for speculation. It has all the problems of an unregulated currency, as well as a few unique to its technology. It is a sign of the failure of the economic theory behind Bitcoin that it can inflate and deflate rapidly. If the naïve economic ideas underlying the design of Bitcoin were valid, it would be a rock-steady store of value.

He also points out that the technology, by design, has a strong, perhaps insuperable, bias towards neoliberal economic models, making regulation of an economy through banking and fiscal policy difficult; an economy based on Bitcoin would be similar to a late 19th century economy, enormously subject to fraud and boom and bust cycles – in other words the abandoned economics in which all but the very wealthy suffer.

It is a useful book, gathering all these arguments in one place. The extensive bibliography in particular is valuable. If Professor Golumbia continues working on this subject, I would be interested in seeing interviews with some of the original cryptocurrency theorists, who are still, as far as I know, alive, as well some coverage of the left-wing anarchist hopes for cryptocurrency. So far as I know those have been exploded, but I think studying their failure would be worthwhile.

So, a worthwhile book. ...more

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Aug 26, 2017 Gustaf Erikson rated it liked it

A good overview of some of the weirder ideological views behind Bitcoin, and internet libertarianism in general.

While I'm sure there's a lot of background to get if you follow the sources, the book itself makes a lot of assumptions about the reader's own political stances, which are assumed to be more or less the same as the author's.

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