Description
Book SynopsisAs the distributed architecture underpinning the initial Bitcoin anarcho-capitalist, libertarian project, ''blockchain'' entered wider public imagination and vocabulary only very recently. Yet in a short space of time it has become more mainstream and synonymous with a spectacular variety of commercial and civic ''problem''/''solution'' concepts and ideals. From commodity provenance, to electoral fraud prevention, to a wholesale decentralisation of power and the banishing of the exploitative practices of ''middlemen'', blockchain stakeholders are nothing short of evangelical in their belief that it is a force for good. For these reasons and more the technology has captured the attention of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, global corporations and governments the world over.
Blockchain may indeed offer a unique technical opportunity to change cultures of transparency and trust within cyberspace, and as revolutionary' and disruptive' has the potential to shift global socioeco
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I Regulating blockchain
1 Blockchain
Interlude I: Supplementing the memory economic: … Wampum, memex, transcopyright, blockchain …
2 A regulatory conundrum
3 Regulatory tradition
4 Blockchain the regulator
Interlude II: Regulatory technology: Louis-Sebastien Mercier’s tax trunk
PART II Critical perspectives
5 Setting the scene
Interlude III: Anarchic technologies for anarchic economies: the ‘yellow trade’ of the Yorkshire coiners
6 Blockchain as an ethics of neoliberal political economy
7 The psycho-politics of blockchain
Interlude IV: A dangerous lack of law: man with machine in Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano
8 Critical regulation
Index
