Buy New

$7.95

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

This item ships to France. Want it Thursday, Sept. 6? Choose AmazonGlobal Priority Shipping at checkout. Learn more

Deliver to

Buy Used

$1.99

+ $3.99 shipping

Deliver to

Used: Good | Details

Sold by midtownscholarbookstore

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Other Sellers on Amazon

Add to Cart

$12.78
+ $1.30 shipping

Sold by: PBShop US

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism (Forerunners: Ideas First) Paperback – September 26, 2016

by David Golumbia (Author)

28 customer reviews

See all 3 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$5.07

—

Paperback

"Please retry"

$7.95

$1.99

Save an extra $0.49 when you apply this coupon.

Details

$0.49 extra savings coupon applied at checkout.

Details

Sorry. You are not eligible for this coupon.

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 the economic and political thought on which this cryptocurrency is based emerges from ideas that travel the gamut, from Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises to Federal Reserve conspiracy theorists.

Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

Frequently bought together

Total price: $19.47

Buy the selected items together

This item:The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism (Forerunners: Ideas First) by David Golumbia Paperback $7.95
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right by Angela Nagle Paperback $11.52
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Angela Nagle

113

Paperback
$11.52
Gary Shteyngart

433

Paperback
$14.01
Astra Taylor

21

Paperback
$15.30
Nick Srnicek

9

Paperback
$12.30
Mark Fisher

41

Paperback
$10.88
Finn Brunton

17

Paperback
$13.91

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Golumbia, in his small but important way, is helping wake us to the falsity of our perceived neutrality."—One Flew East

"This book is a very readable and valuable monograph which combines sound historical research with insightful analysis. All concerned citizens should read this book, which is an essential resource for understanding the true stakes of current technological hyperbole."—Newsclick

"Golumbia a le mérite de s’attaquer à des idées qui ne sont pas suffisamment remises en question dans les communautés de la cryptomonnaie et des technologies de chaînes concertées. J’en recommande fortement la lecture à quiconque s’interroge sur les impacts de ces technologies sur nos sociétés."—D’un bloc à l’autre

About the Author

David Golumbia teaches in the English Department and the Media, Art, and Text PhD program at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author of The Cultural Logic of Computation and many articles on digital culture, language, and literary studies and theory, and he blogs on digital studies at http://uncomputing.org.

Series: Forerunners: Ideas First
Paperback: 100 pages
Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1 edition (September 26, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1517901804
ISBN-13: 978-1517901806
Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.4 x 7 inches
Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 28 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #341,893 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #36 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Libertarianism
- #147 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Digital Currencies
- #382 in Books > Computers & Technology > History & Culture

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

If you buy a new print edition of this book (or purchased one in the past), you can buy the Kindle edition for only $2.99 (Save 33%). Print edition purchase must be sold by Amazon. .

Be the first video

Your name here

Customer reviews

3 star (0%)

Write a customer review

See all 28 customer reviews

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

John Speranza

Just an outstanding and very readable explanation of the ways ...

January 29, 2018

Verified Purchase

Just an outstanding and very readable explanation of the ways in which Bitcoin misses the mark, both in concept and in execution, and rests on faulty assumptions about how currency can and should work.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Bob Morris

A concise explanation of the extreme right-wing ideology of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies

September 19, 2017

Verified Purchase

Bitcoin was birthed in and is influenced by extremist right-wing libertarian ideology. You are no doubt familiar with their rants. We must protect ourselves from the dammed gummint who wants to take our money and, oh yeah, the Federal Reserve prints money, which causes inflation, and is doing this for nefarious reasons, probably to control us and of course, take our money.

No matter that none of this makes actual economic sense, and that such crackpot ideologies are dismissed by actual economists. Right-wing libertarians appear primarily anguished by the thought that a) they have to pay taxes and b) that someone else might gain benefit for their tax money. That they themselves are helped by tax money others have paid never occurs to them.

So then, their goal is to hide as much money as possible from the government, and even if doing so might constitute tax evasion and money laundering, that would be a-ok because they are doing it for a noble cause and the rules don't apply to them anyway.

Bitcoin is a perfect platform for this. However bitcoin proponents end up being incoherent. They claim paper money printed by governments is unstable and bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) will replace it. Except the price of bitcoin skitters wildly all over the place, so it's not stable at all. Plus, a few can and do manipulate the price. Thefts and ripoffs are common, and it doesn't scale. There's no way bitcoin - which can do a whopping seven transactions a second now maximum - will ever replace actual currencies.

At heart, bitcoin is about eliminating governments and replacing them with a deranged unworkable fantasy of an ungoverned global marketplace with no rules and no regulations, in which everyone is somehow supposed to be free. It's rubbish. A few on the top, the miners, will control it, and it won't be decentralized at all.

David Golumbia parses all of this in great detail in "The Politics of Bitcoin," explaining how and why bitcoin emerged from John Bircher nutcase ideology and still owes much to that, and why this should make the rest of us uneasy.

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

M. Avila

Good insights, hard to follow

January 6, 2018

Verified Purchase

Well sourced and a decent 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 tough read due to some awkward syntax and extended parenthetical asides that would work better as footnotes.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Jason Wilson

Superb outline of the ideological project underlying cryptocurrencies

January 26, 2018

Verified Purchase

Golumbia ties Bitcoin quite directly to conspiratorial far right/libertarian ideas about money, banking, and economics as a whole. He argues that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies do not merely express once marginal economic theories, but also help to disseminate and naturalize their claims. Even in the current moment of far right insurgency, libertarian economics and its connection to Silicon Valley’s efforts to remake the world are underexamined. Polemical, very readable, and straight to the point.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Umpei Kurokawa

This book provides some interesting insights by placing Bitcoin in ...

March 14, 2018

Verified Purchase

This book provides some interesting insights by placing Bitcoin in the modern American political context. It correctly cites some important ideological predecessors which may not be so obvious such as Hayak, Friedman, Rothbard, Cyberlibertarians, Cypherpunks, and Crypto Anarchists. However, his conclusion only makes sense when viewed from the very narrow lens of modern American politics. This may be done on purpose, but it is an inherently flawed way of looking at a technology which has gone global. For example, the author often mistakenly equates "anti-government" as being strictly a right wing ideology but this is incorrect (i.e, in the 60's , being "anti-government" was a left wing thing).

Any time the author mentions "central banking", he seems to only be referring to the "US Federal Reserve" as if that was the only central bank in the world. The fact is that many central banks have failed in the past, and is failing today (see Venezuela). That is not a leftist or rightist position, that is just reality. He also makes a huge and inexcusable omission of the 2008 financial crisis and the Occupy movement under which Bitcoin was created from. This omission is intellectually dishonest as the Occupy movement and "too big to fail" are leftist movements that parallels Bitcoin's development. In summary, the author's thesis is incorrect and over simplified. Even if he was correct, the viewpoint is so narrow (looking at Bitcoin in the current American political context) that his analysis has limited use.

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

J. M. Korhonen

Excellent and timely critical essay of a potentially powerful technology

October 28, 2017

Verified Purchase

As an essay, I would have rated this a four-star one, but the timeliness of the topic and the dearth of critical overviews of Bitcoin, blockchain and the ideologies behind them make this indispensable reading for anyone interested and concerned about the direction technology, and technologists, are taking us.

The boom does a fine job exposing the peculiarities and contradictions behind the Bitcoin, and shows again how currecies are to some extent ideological projects. In this case, the ideologues are the extreme right wing libertarians and anarchocapitalists who see the democratic society as oppressive one but pay lip service, at best, even to the possibility of misdemeanours of wealthy individuals and corporations. As a researcher studying the social implications of blockchain technologies, these tendencies have been impossible to miss, and I applaud the author for making such a persuasive case in such a short treatise.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism (Forerunners: Ideas First)

Set up a giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Angela Nagle

113

Paperback
$11.52
Gary Shteyngart

433

Paperback
$14.01
Chapo Trap House

140

in General Elections & Political…
Hardcover
$16.05
Mark Fisher

41

Paperback
$10.88
Gary Shteyngart

191

Paperback
$10.74
Gary Shteyngart

404

Paperback
$13.36

Buy New

$7.95

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Buy Used

$1.99

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Other Sellers on Amazon

The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism (Forerunners: Ideas First) Paperback – September 26, 2016

Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Product details

Related Video Shorts (0)

Be the first video

Customer reviews

Read reviews that mention

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Most recent customer reviews

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Buy New $7.95

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Buy Used $1.99

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Sorry, there was a problem.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Other Sellers on Amazon

The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism (Forerunners: Ideas First) Paperback – September 26, 2016

Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Product details

Related Video Shorts (0)

Be the first video

Customer reviews

Read reviews that mention

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Most recent customer reviews

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Buy New

$7.95

Buy Used

$1.99