Money/code/space : Bitcoin, blockchain, and geographies of algorithmic decentralisation

Abstract

Newly emerging cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology provide a challenging research problem for human geographers. Bitcoin, the first widely implemented cryptocurrency and example of a blockchain architecture, seemingly separates itself from the existing territorial boundedness of nation state currencies via a digital process of algorithmic decentralisation. Proponents declare that utilisation of cryptography to advance blockchain transactions will disrupt the modern centralised structures by which capitalist economies are currently organised: corporations, commercial banks, and central banks. I contest this perspective. The core argument of this thesis is that blockchains must be understood as a spatial problem where power is unevenly distributed across their networks. Secondly, and building upon this principle, it is proposed that algorithmic decentralisation is inherently a contradictory concept by highlighting a number of distinctive points across Bitcoin's architecture where forms of centralised control are competed for. Thirdly, the thesis describes how online communities, start-up companies, and existing financial institutions exercise power from these many centres by paying close attention to the political ideologies and practices that combine to form a unique technoculture. This research analyses these sociotechnical dynamics, systems, and conditions to make intelligible the political, cultural, and economic geographies of blockchains. In doing so the thesis builds on existing literatures and empirical research pertaining to money/space and code/space to critically evaluate the postulation of blockchain decentralisation. An actor-network inspired 'follow the thing' methodology enables the thesis to navigate and trace some of the primary connections between diverse sociotechnical actors that create blockchain economies. The method of 'following' extends into an examination of the Bitcoin source code, online forums, and social media activity so as to develop a critical understanding of blockchain's cultural economic geographies. By tracing both the humans and non-humans of Bitcoin's infrastructure the way in which transactions are materially tied together through space is outlined. Additionally, the technique of snowball sampling was used to conduct participant observation and semi-structured interviews in the burgeoning Bitcoin/blockchain ecosystem of Silicon Valley, supported by an investigation of key entrepreneurial spaces, such as start-up companies and meet-up groups, in London and New York City. These methods help develop an analytical framework that demonstrates how the technical parameters of blockchains""block size, private key control, mining operations""are altered by people in varied cultural settings and thus practise and shape blockchains in competing ways. The analysis of empirical data frames different 'spaces' as strategic passage points through which various practices are increasingly funnelled (Callon, 1986). Examining these bottlenecks from a cultural economic geography perspective, this thesis demonstrates how the codified architectures of blockchains are (re)centred on a number of levels: governance mechanisms that organise their programmers; materialities of infrastructure that execute their code; bureaucratic business models built by start-up companies to profit from their transaction structures, and; the embeddedness of technical knowledge within industrial agglomerations. These empirical observations provide the foundation for a critique of blockchain 'solutionism' that envisions distributed algorithmic software as the harbinger of more stable and democratic economies by transferring governance to the mathematical constraints of computer code. Subsequent analysis contributes to spatial theory by outlining a cultural economic geography of Bitcoin and copycat blockchain projects where a hybrid form of human-machine governance shapes their algorithmic structures. While blockchain economies transform the relationships between money, code, and space, the study and analysis of key points where money/code/space is produced, contested, and monitored shows how algorithmic decentralisation is predicated on centralised actors, practices, and forces.

Date of Award	2018
Original language	English