TY - JOUR
AU - Mudge, Stephanie, Lee
AB - Abstract Can social movements mobilize market devices to challenge the political–economic order? Focusing on Bitcoin, we argue that an effective anti-state market device needs to be durably ‘counterearmarked’, to use Viviana Zelizer’s term, with radical meaning. This durability, however, requires that the movement build alliances with holders of political and economic power who also embrace the device’s radical meaning, lest those actors reformat the device to suit their purposes. To make this case, we locate Bitcoin’s radical origins in a performative project built on elements of Austrian monetary theory. We then track Bitcoin’s dual transformation between 2009 and 2014: the anti-state movement gave way to a market featuring big financial players, and the Internal Revenue Service officially redefined the bitcoin currency as property. Understanding this dual transformation requires joining Zelizerian conceptions of money with theories of markets-and-movements on the one hand, and symbolic-cultural conceptions of the classificatory state on the other. 1. Introduction Bitcoin, a digital and non-national currency, has helped reignite the debate on the nature of money and its role in social relations (e.g., Maurer et al., 2013; Dodd, 2018). Less explored has been the social movement behind Bitcoin and its attempt to challenge the existing political–economic order. The Bitcoin movement emerged around a market device—that is, an instrument that allows a market to function (Fligstein and Calder, 2015)—that incorporated contrarian monetary ideas into its design. As a currency, bitcoin1 appeared to draw upon a set of assumptions promoted by the Austrian School of economics, essentially that markets, as opposed to states, determine money’s true value. The school is closely aligned with individuals holding anti-state views (Burgin, 2012). From 2009 to 2012, individuals of this stripe built market institutions (e.g. currency exchanges, payment processors and marketplaces for drugs) to accept bitcoin and facilitate its flow to new users. Yet, by 2014, Bitcoin’s anti-state elements were mostly ignored or refuted by a new guard taking control of the Bitcoin economy: economic elites from Silicon Valley and Wall Street who had, ironically, forged alliances with politicians and regulators within the US federal government. One of the outcomes of this partnership was the state’s tolerance of bitcoin, but not as a currency. Instead, in 2014, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) defined bitcoin as property, signaling that the USA had deemed Bitcoin’s existence as somewhat acceptable yet also draining the device of its state-challenging intent. Given the rise and fall of Bitcoin as an anti-state market-building initiative, an analysis of Bitcoin’s trajectory can enhance the growing literature on the relationship between movements, markets and states. Accordingly, our article is guided by a pair of related questions: How does an anti-state movement make a market? And what explains this market’s cooptation? We take up the topic of the conditions of anti-state challenges, and the role of market devices therein, via a historical analysis of Bitcoin's formation and emergent market between 2009 and 2014. In doing so, we focus on two empirical puzzles regarding the bitcoin currency: (a) its emergence as a ‘radical’ currency and (b) its transformation into an investment. On the first puzzle, we contend that bitcoin emerged as a radical currency through a performativity process that involved the mobilization of Austrian monetary arguments; on the second puzzle, we find that bitcoin’s transformation was driven by financial elites coopting an ill-equipped, fledgling market and working with the state to repurpose bitcoin as a regulated investment rather than an anti-state currency. Marrying a long history of political struggles over the forms and values of currency to a new age of digital technology, we argue that one strategy for a contemporary anti-state movement to form a market outside of, as opposed to under the auspices of, the state is to create and adopt a digital currency. Additionally, the Bitcoin case suggests that currencies will only remain as such to the extent that individuals use them in everyday transactions. Further, those championing the currency as an alternative to state-issued money may be pressured into forging alliances with holders of political and economic power who, also, embrace the currency’s radical meaning. If not, the currency is vulnerable to cooptation and an essential change in meaning by financial elites, the state or both. From here, the article proceeds as follows. In the next section, we provide some background on the Bitcoin case. After a review of relevant literatures on movements and markets, performativity, the social meanings of money and states as repositories of definitional power, we summarize our analytic approach. In the latter half of the article, we provide an empirical discussion of bitcoin’s two puzzles and concluding remarks. 2. Bitcoin’s unorthodox success and transformation For clarity’s sake, we underscore here that ‘Bitcoin’ (with an uppercase ‘B’) refers to the social manifestations of the phenomenon, including the movement, network of users and market. In contrast, ‘bitcoin’ (with a lowercase ‘b’) refers specifically to the currency that the network produces and that is used in transactions. Bitcoin is unique among digital currencies of the past in that it is the first to find a market for itself that is tolerated by not only the US but also several countries, including Japan, South Korea and Germany. Whereas, prior digital currencies were befallen by associations with criminal activity and security failures, bitcoin has persevered despite encountering the same problems. Bitcoin’s trajectory from radical currency to popular investment can be traced through two critical junctures or ‘focal moments’ (Lofland, 1996) from June 2011: first, an online exposé of bitcoin as the currency of choice in the online drug bazaar Silk Road; and second, a hack of the top bitcoin-fiat currency exchange at the time, Mt Gox. On the one hand, this publicity brought new users and increased activity to the Bitcoin network, which coincided with a jump in the value of its currency (Figure 1). On the other hand, it brought Bitcoin to the attention of the US government, which was newly aware of the network’s competing, non-national digital currency that facilitated nearly-anonymous exchange of drugs over the Internet and currency trading through shadow businesses operating without required licenses. Figure 1. View largeDownload slide Bitcoin price (July 2010–December 2014). Source: CoinDesk (2018) ‘Bitcoin Price Index—July 18, 2010 to December 31, 2014’, accessed at https://www.coindesk.com/price/ on May 2, 2019. Notes: ‘Civil actions’ include lawsuits and complaints filed by individuals and businesses about a matter related to Bitcoin. ‘Money transmitter licensing’ includes applications for a federal and state money transmitter licenses by Bitcoin companies. ‘Other’ includes one application to trademark Bitcoin; one application for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund; and one request by a political committee to receive contributions in bitcoins. Figure 1. View largeDownload slide Bitcoin price (July 2010–December 2014). Source: CoinDesk (2018) ‘Bitcoin Price Index—July 18, 2010 to December 31, 2014’, accessed at https://www.coindesk.com/price/ on May 2, 2019. Notes: ‘Civil actions’ include lawsuits and complaints filed by individuals and businesses about a matter related to Bitcoin. ‘Money transmitter licensing’ includes applications for a federal and state money transmitter licenses by Bitcoin companies. ‘Other’ includes one application to trademark Bitcoin; one application for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund; and one request by a political committee to receive contributions in bitcoins. Before Bitcoin, the US government took an aggressive stance toward digital currency projects such as e-gold, e-bullion and Liberty Reserve, bringing a range of charges against their operators, including failure to register as a money transmitting business, counterfeiting and other forms of fraud, drug dealing and terrorist financing (Mullan, 2016). Even if digital currency operators avoided prison, the legal penalties they incurred inevitably forced them to shut down their digital currency businesses. The typical timeline of digital currencies operated by US citizens typically went as follows. First, the project attracted a small but fervent following and avoided legal interference. Second, federal authorities became aware that the digital currency was being used to facilitate illicit activity. Third, operators of businesses associated with the currency were charged, typically for unlawful money transmission. Fourth, the digital currency fell into disuse. The US government’s restraint in pursuing legal action against Bitcoin’s known developers following the Silk Road and Mt Gox scandals is therefore anomalous. US prosecutors indicted operators of the Liberty Reserve currency on charges of counterfeiting in 2013 (Lee, 2013a) even as bitcoin, an explicitly anti-state currency, was gaining widespread attention in the media. Adding complexity to the puzzle of bitcoin’s transformation is the fact that the negative publicity associated with the Silk Road and Mt Gox scandals did not harm the currency’s adoption, as many had predicted. Instead, the network expanded and the price of bitcoin rose. Later, in 2014, the IRS consecrated bitcoin as a legal (i.e. legitimate) market device—but not of the radical, anti-state sort that its progenitors envisioned. We frame this relative success as a key transition in the social meaning of bitcoin, which we analyze in Section 5. 3. Theory and relevant literature Contemporary literatures on politics and markets duly note that social movements aiming at market intervention often aim, also, to alter or intervene in the workings of the state, but they generally fail to consider either specifically anti-state movements or the role of market devices therein. In this section, we address this oversight by bringing literatures on states, markets and movements together with work in economic sociology on money and performativity in order to situate and account for the rise and transformation of Bitcoin and its currency. 3.1 Social movements and markets Economic sociology has recently explored the connection between social movements and market change (see King and Pearce, 2010 for an overview; also see Bair and Palpacuer, 2012; Dubuisson-Quellier, 2013). In this literature, social movements are depicted as destabilizing forces of the status quo and sources of new ideas, technologies and organizations that serve as the foundation for markets. Social movements’ involvement in markets is rife with contention: as markets come to concentrate resources, construct monopolies, allow for outsize political power, exclude some members of society and facilitate environmental harm and increased inequality, social movements arise to challenge them (King and Pearce, 2010). In doing so, social movements address and impact not only firms, but also non-governmental organizations and states. Social movements often attract scholarly attention because of their contentious politics with the state (McAdam et al., 1996; McAdam et al., 2001). Yet, where economic issues are concerned, scholars have typically profiled market-oriented movements that see states as an ally or a vehicle for change—that is, as a repository of power that is struggled over—rather than a target of fundamental opposition. In this context, states are depicted as an apparatus for meeting movements’ demands, such as for religious (e.g. Gusfield, 1986) or environmental concerns (e.g. Vogel, 1995). At other times, social movements have elected to bypass the state, mobilizing to challenge society more generally on the basis of values, beliefs and identities (Armstrong and Bernstein, 2008). For example, the institutionalization of the LGBT community included movement actors creating annual parades and resource guides—organizational activity tangential to specific political goals (Armstrong, 2002). In another instance, anti-Vietnam War activists within the scientific field worked to increase citizen access to information about controversial technologies and pushed one another to be critical of their own scientific disciplines (Moore, 1999). To be sure, such ‘moral movements’ can induce change in policy and markets, but this is a consequence of the primary effort toward an ideological and structural reorientation within society. To the extent that social movements are involved in the production of new markets, figureheads or ‘institutional entrepreneurs’ associated with movements are often the ones to first pose disruptive ideas and organizational activities against the status quo (Ganz, 2000; Rao et al., 2000; Hargrave and Van De Ven, 2006). If they are to create a new market on their terms, leaders and collective actors must marshal shared resources to support a consistent rhetorical mission and material infrastructure (King and Pearce, 2010). When the target is a macro-structure like capitalism, which is inextricably linked to the state, the diffusion of alternative ideas and organizational forms is an inherently political process involving both incumbents and insurgents (Schneiberg, 2007; Schneiberg et al., 2008). Several individuals have recognized Bitcoin as a social movement, however, one of a particular political stripe (e.g. Popper, 2015; Vigna and Casey, 2015; Dodd, 2018). Unlike the American farmworker and civil rights movements, which sought political representation and reform, the Bitcoin movement viewed the state as a target, not the means to an end. As an anti-state movement, its goals were to disintermediate the money supply from large banks and governments by promoting adoption of a stateless currency (Dodd, 2018). This was understood as a crucial step toward a new, stateless world (see BraveTheWorld, 2017, for a Bitcoin manifesto). Economic sociology on the concept of performativity provides insights for how this particular mission began. 3.2 Performativity Broadly, the literature on performativity maintains that markets are social constructions rather than immanent or natural entities, and that the form those constructions take is an effect of market theories, techniques and practices—particularly those generated within economics and carried forth by economists. The argument, in other words, is that ‘economics does not describe an existing external “economy”, but brings that economy into being: economics performs the economy, creating the phenomena it describes’ (MacKenzie and Millo, 2003, p. 108; see also Callon, 1998).What this suggests is that, in the contemporary moment, the dynamics of market-making have to be explained with reference, at least in part, to economists and economic theories. Performing a market also requires a normative dimension. Actors must maintain shared understandings about what it is they hope to accomplish and cooperate throughout their endeavor. In their analysis of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, MacKenzie and Millo (2003) found that while traders performed (i.e. enacted) option price theory and then adjusted the market so that prices conformed to the pricing model’s predictions, doing so entailed a network of interpersonal connections, altruistic behavior and shared moral commitments. On the trading floor, reputations and interpersonal trust were significant. Rather than atomized action among purely rational agents, collective work and a shared sense of what maneuvers were permissible (or even possible, given humans’ cognitive limitations) gave rise to derivatives markets. In our analysis, Bitcoin’s origin story can also be read as a performative process in which Austrian monetary principles are built into the conception and design of the Bitcoin system. Yet, in line with MacKenzie and Millo’s arguments, bitcoin's success as a medium of exchange depended on a broad network of actors embracing the movement's understanding of bitcoin as an anti-state device. Absent such agreement, various actors had the ability to impute a meaning onto bitcoin that was different from the movement's. Engagement with Zelizerian theories of money on the one hand and the classificatory powers of states on the other sheds light on this process. 3.3 States, classification and the meanings of money Although much disagreement remains, scholars of money agree that it contains three primary functions: it is a medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value. (The closest analogue to currency is that of medium of exchange.) For Ingham (2004), an essential property of money is its creation through credit and debt relations, owing to the modern primacy of commercial and central banks in increasing the money supply through lending. The most important sociological account of money, however, treats it as a repository of social meaning that takes shape in relational context. In Viviana Zelizer’s (1997) conception, money has no inherent social or political meaning; rather, it is infused with variable meanings in historical and relational contexts. Here, the important question is not so much money’s origins or its specific significance in a given time and place, but rather the way in which its meanings are multiplied and reworked as money moves through networks of social relations. In her words: [A]t each step in money’s advance, people have reshaped their commercial transactions, introduced new distinctions, invented their own special forms of currency, earmarked money in ways that baffle market theorists, incorporated money into personalized webs of friendship, family relations, interactions with authorities, and forays into shops and businesses (Zelizer, 1997, p. 2). Money can thus be ‘honest’ or ‘dirty’, for instance, and is often invented and transformed. Here Zelizer notes the wide range of ‘invented monies’, including food stamps, coupons, prison scrips and gift certificates. In a certain sense, then, digital currencies like bitcoin are merely another instance of the creative social dynamics by which money is invented, infused with meaning, but ever-vulnerable to redefinition. Money is, in this line of thinking, relationally and contextually defined—‘everywhere we look, different kinds of social relations and values reshape monies’—and, in contemporary capitalism, a repository of sacredness (Zelizer, 1997, p. 201). Zelizerian thinking is especially helpful for our purposes because the link between variability in bitcoin’s meaning and shifts in the kinds of actors involved with its adoption is precisely our concern. The meanings of money are determined, Zelizer argues, by ‘earmarking’, but earmarking processes are defined relationally, and are thus never final or permanent. Rather, ‘the duration of a particular form of earmarking is directly tied to a particular money’s cultural and social context’ (1997, p. 209). Central to that context is the involvement of state authorities, who are uniquely endowed with the ability to produce, categorize and stabilize currencies. But Zelizer notes that the institutionalization of money inevitably produces ‘counterearmarking and contest’: for instance, the imposition of new meanings on fiat currencies or the production of alternative currencies that carry a special non-state (or, in our case, anti-state) meaning. Insofar as this kind of contestation is a basic feature of Zelizerian thinking on the social dynamics of money, bitcoin presents a particularly interesting object for economic sociology. Zelizer’s conception of money offers a powerful account of its varied and changeable meaning, but does not delve much into the intersection of money, market-making and social movements, anti-state or otherwise. Can a new form of money be ‘counterearmarked’ in a durable, anti-state way by a libertarian social movement, such that the state’s fundamental power not only over money, but also its meaning, is undermined? Contemporary conceptions of the state as the key modern repository of symbolic or definitional power cast the possibility of a durable, money-based, anti-state social movement in doubt, for the simple reason that states are uniquely positioned to impose state-friendly ‘earmarks’ on the meaning of money—including, in the first place, to define what money is and what it is not. This is consistent with Fligstein’s (1996) account, in which states enact rules that format and govern other social institutions, including markets. Likewise, for Bourdieu the state is that which ‘successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical and symbolic violence over a definite territory and the … corresponding population,’ in part by establishing and reinforcing systems of meaning and classification (Bourdieu et al., 1994, p. 3; see also Loveman, 2005). The difficulty with generating a form of money with radical, anti-state meaning, then, is that the contemporary state’s power as a producer and consecrator of meaning is unmatched. Taken together, the Zelizerian theory of money and symbolic-cultural conceptions of state power suggest that a digital currency is unlikely to form a durable basis of anti-state political mobilization. And yet other work shows that the state does not wield total definitional authority—indeed, political and social movement actors have, in some cases, been able to change existing state categorizations and drive the making of new ones (e.g. Mora, 2014; Paschel, 2016). These analyses, however, have not centered on any institution so fundamental to state power as the institution of money. Nor does this work deal specifically with anti-state movements. To these matters we now turn. 4. Methods and data We take a historical approach in our analysis in order to understand an anti-state social movement’s production of a market. Our empirical investigation focuses on the time frame from 2009 to 2014—that is, the period from the release of the Bitcoin software to its currency’s definition as property by the IRS. Although Bitcoin is, in a sense, a global phenomenon that has touched several countries, our data center on events, actors and organizations in the US. We chose to study Bitcoin’s presence in the US because the country ranked first in number of Bitcoin downloads (SourceForge, 2018) and market share (Young, 2017) during our chosen time frame.2 4.1 Process-tracing We make use of theory-building process-tracing (Beach and Pedersen, 2013), a method suited to situations in which the researcher knows that some outcome occurred, but not the factors and changes that contributed to it. First, the researcher creates a thorough empirical narrative of the case—in the form of a timeline, for example. Second, drawing from relevant theory and intuitions of empirical accounts, the researcher looks for instances of potentially plausible components of explanatory mechanisms. Third, based on the weight of evidence, the researcher formulates an overall explanation consisting of factors (actors, organizations and social constructs like ‘democracy’, for example) engaging in activities that produce a substantive change. 4.2 Data Our data come from a variety of sources, including histories, news media and industry research. As we note below, certain sources became more relevant as we progressed through our analysis and components of mechanisms began to emerge. In the first stage, we created a timeline and actor profiles from an array of sources and then searched for empirical manifestations of mechanistic parts. In the second stage, we drew on additional sources that contained rich detail that directly related to our preliminary explanation. 4.2.1 Stage one data To construct a timeline of events and profiles of key actors, we referenced four journalistic histories on Bitcoin (Pagliery, 2014; Popper, 2015; Vigna and Casey, 2015; Eha, 2017), which contain interviews with actors involved in Bitcoin’s creation and transformation. We also referenced major newspapers (using the ProQuest News & Newspapers Database and searching for ‘bitcoin’ with a date range of 2009–2014) and the digital currency publication CoinDesk. 4.2.2 Stage two data After identifying major actors (and their affiliations) involved in Bitcoin’s story, we drew on further sources to establish activities that were driving change. For instances of unethical activity (hacking, ransom and fraud), we referenced reports on the Bitcoin Talk forum. For data on the Bitcoin market and network we referred to CoinDesk and Blockchain.info, respectively. We examined relevant court documents, testimonies at congressional hearings and rules and regulations to understand how Bitcoin representatives interacted with politicians and state officials, and how those regulatory figures ultimately viewed Bitcoin. Finally, we referred to Mullan’s (2016) history of digital currencies in order to compare the state’s relationship with Bitcoin to digital currency projects of the past. We now turn to our analysis of Bitcoin’s formative years: 2009–2014. It begins with the software’s creation (for Bitcoin, with an uppercase ‘B’, is a software that links to a network of users, as well as a movement and market in our study) and concludes with the IRS classifying bitcoin (the currency, with a lowercase ‘b’) as property, which was reflective of how investors were treating bitcoin in March of 2014. 5. Analysis: from movement to market and currency to investment, 2009–2014 Our analysis of Bitcoin is composed of two parts. The first frames Bitcoin’s creation and market formation by performativity, of Austrian monetary theory in particular, and the Zelizerian infusion of radical meaning to the bitcoin currency. The second part details the changes in Bitcoin’s collective project, focusing on an impasse following the two critical junctures of the media’s attention to bitcoin’s use in the Silk Road drug marketplace and the hack of Mt Gox, the largest online exchange where one could swap fiat currencies for bitcoin and vice versa. These events are pivotal to bitcoin’s transformation from currency to investment, which was marked by financial elites entering the market and building alliances with state actors. 5.1 Formation: performing Austrian monetary theory The social history of Bitcoin’s origins is a performativity story amid a crisis: the making of a market device in the image of Austrian monetary theory as the 2007–2008 financial crisis unfolded. We show that the figure who is broadly understood to be Bitcoin’s founder—Nick Szabo, working under the pseudonym ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’—understood his project on some level as an enactment of Austrian monetary theory and incorporated that understanding into the technological design of the new currency. Writings under the authorships of both Szabo and Nakamoto assert the supremacy of private market exchange over the influence of government or, more specifically, treasuries and central banks. They also show an ambition for a financial system that is truly trustworthy—one that precludes inflation by removing human interventions (such as government bailouts and central banks’ adjustable interest rates) and limiting the overall supply of money. Taking Szabo’s/Nakamoto’s writings and, more importantly, the design of the Bitcoin system into consideration, we find a performative account linking Bitcoin’s origins to Austrian monetary theory compelling and instructive. We emphasize Szabo’s role and economic philosophy because he is generally believed to be the person behind Satoshi Nakamoto,3 though some commentators remain unconvinced.4 Not only did Szabo propose a precursor to Bitcoin called Bit Gold in 2005, but he frequently wrote about Austrian economics on his blog before Bitcoin’s release. Similarly, the Nakamoto white paper on how Bitcoin works and several online posts under that pseudonym echo the economic beliefs held by Szabo. But what exactly was performed? And how? With Bitcoin, principles of Austrian monetary theory are most clearly evident in the design of the Bitcoin open-source software. For the classical Austrian economists, money emerges naturally from economic relationships. The state is not necessary for money’s creation.5 In fact, in Austrian thinking, the state’s authority over and thus gradual manipulation of its currency leads to its devaluation.6 The state creates money through lending, continually flooding greater amounts of its currency into the economy. The state cannot put a cap on its money supply for it has debt obligations to meet. To prevent such devaluation, Austrian monetary theory suggests that money must first begin as a commodity—that is, something with inherent value, which is absent in fiat. Some of these commodities have greater practicality than others as a medium of exchange. Therefore, commodities ‘compete’ with one another in markets for primacy to fulfill each of money’s functions. Those that are the most liquid, or ‘saleable’ in Austrian terms, tend to emerge as money in markets. Given that competition among currencies is theorized as healthy, Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek went one step further in endorsing a system of private enterprises that issue currencies based on innovative technologies.7 The design of the Bitcoin software incorporates these monetary principles. The software in and of itself does not completely perform the bitcoin currency as money. That would require a durable market that continued to have easy access to bitcoins and a putative reason for transacting with them. Rather, Bitcoin’s design provides a blueprint for a token (bitcoin) that conforms with Austrian monetary theory of how quintessential money comes to be. Specifically, bitcoin is a scarce commodity that is privately issued and relatively liquid.8 Bitcoin’s currency is a commodity because the software solves a problem that has befuddled cryptographers in computer science for decades, namely how to validate transactions without a third party and simultaneously prevent individuals from ‘double-spending’ (or counterfeiting) a digital token. The system also provides a decentralized and autonomous network, privacy protected by cryptography, a transparent ledger of every transaction and lower transaction costs than those between vendors, credit card companies and banks. In other words, to join the network of users running the Bitcoin software is to participate in a specialized economy that avoids the problems associated with inflationary, state-backed currencies. Its constitution as an open-source project assists in this regard as Bitcoin does not lend to any entity, nor does it have any funding obligations to meet. In contrast, the production of bitcoins is ‘interventionless’, bound by computer code that mints bitcoins at scheduled intervals until it reaches a limit of 21 million. On this basis, Bitcoin’s software performs Austrian monetary theory by including features in its design that the theory claims are essential for ideal money. At the same time, direct evidence that Nakamoto specifically modeled Bitcoin on the theory is scant. Nakamoto neither mentions Austrian monetary theory in his white paper detailing the mechanics of Bitcoin9 nor in his posts on message boards. Szabo, the presumed individual behind the Nakamoto moniker, shows a fascination with the Austrian School on his blog, however. On several occasions10 he credits Austrian economist Carl Menger with developing the most ‘logical’ theory of how money emerges out of markets where commodities are bartered and, in turn, how economic institutions develop around commodity monies. At a conference in 2015, Szabo referred to Hayek’s notion of private currencies as one obvious inspiration for bitcoin.11 In fact, his Bit Gold proposal from 200512 incorporates the Austrian School’s preoccupation with scarcity (as well as the Hayekian vision of a secure property registry). For his part, Nakamoto’s public statements communicate the Austrian School’s affinity with libertarianism.13 One need only look to Ludwig von Mises’s critical view of the state to glean a philosophical justification for private over national currencies: He who says ‘state’ means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like.14 A thread of distrust toward the state runs throughout the more normative discussions among Austrian economists. For Nakamoto, his dismay of the state was due to its inability to honor the integrity of money: The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.15 Such sentiment was palpable following the US Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, widely seen as an undeserved taxpayer bailout to investment banks. In fact, Nakamoto famously referenced the 2007–2008 financial crisis when making the first transaction in bitcoin by including a headline from the January 3, 2009 edition of The Times: ‘Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks.’16 In the context on the crisis, Bitcoin’s timely release in early 2009 served as both a critique of Keynesian monetary policy, which advocates for an outsize role of central banks in the economy and an ingenious, if somewhat esoteric, alternative to currency creation. Nakamoto’s white paper on Bitcoin clearly conveys an intention to provide not only a stateless currency, but a system that can avoid the inflationary problems that plagued the global economy in the late 2000s. Nakamoto refers to his invention as one of ‘commerce’, ‘payments’, ‘transactions’, ‘merchants’, ‘payers’, ‘payees’, ‘spending’ and ‘coins’, all of which suggest an economy or marketplace where bitcoin is meant to change (digital) hands in return for goods and services. At one point, Nakamoto critiques the present financial system where ‘no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party.’17 In advertising Bitcoin on public forums he was less reserved about who the villains were, writing in February 2009 that ‘Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve.’18 The online libertarian community—generally young and savvy technologically—was enthralled with Bitcoin. A smaller number of anarchists who favored markets over state-controlled economies were also quick to participate in the project. A survey of Bitcoin users in 2013 found that the overriding political beliefs of participants were libertarian and anarchist.19 Two notable examples of Bitcoin’s early libertarian proponents were Martti Malmi and Roger Ver.20 As a computer programming student in Helsinki, Malmi was the first person to help Nakamoto update the Bitcoin software. Commenting on Bitcoin, Malmi once wrote, ‘A widespread adoption of such a system sounds like something that could have a devastating effect on the state’s ability to feed on its livestock.’21 Ver, who was the first person to invest in a Bitcoin company, says he ‘converted’ to libertarianism after reading Mises.22 Beyond mere ideological preferences, the commercial behavior of movement actors reflected their anti-state sentiments. The early Bitcoin market hosted individuals and businesses that facilitated the exchange of illegal drugs, avoided licensing requirements and anti-money laundering precautions and delayed seeking guidance on reporting gains in digital currency on their taxes. Indeed, during Bitcoin’s first three years only one business sought the required license for operating as a money transmitter (Figure 2). After a popular website for technology enthusiasts ran a small story on Bitcoin in July of 2010, downloads increased from 3 000 to 20 000.23 Amid this new wave of users, a few of the most radical among them created institutions to promote the spread of bitcoins. One user started an online exchange for bitcoins called Mt Gox.24 Even though it would facilitate the exchange of US dollars for the digital currency, its founder did not register with the US Department of the Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) as a money services business, nor did he attempt to acquire the required money transmitter licenses with individual states. In January 2011, someone started an online marketplace, Silk Road, for people to buy and sell drugs with bitcoins.25 An unlicensed payment processor and gambling website would soon follow. Figure 2. View largeDownload slide The Bitcoin community’s use of state and federal government services in the US. Sources:Popper (2015); Vigna and Casey (2015); Eha (2017); ProQuest News & Newspapers (2018) ‘Search for keyword “bitcoin”, January 2009–December 2013’. Figure 2. View largeDownload slide The Bitcoin community’s use of state and federal government services in the US. Sources:Popper (2015); Vigna and Casey (2015); Eha (2017); ProQuest News & Newspapers (2018) ‘Search for keyword “bitcoin”, January 2009–December 2013’. Given these developments, we find an additional aspect of performativity in the Bitcoin case. While Austrian monetary theory appeared to inform Bitcoin’s design, the early market for bitcoins came to reflect the assumption within Austrian monetary theory that media of exchange are dependent on a commodity’s practicality. For the Austrian School, if a currency proves satisfactory to buyers and sellers of particular goods and services—that is, both buyers and sellers agree the currency has value—then market institutions that deal in the currency will emerge. What early adopters found in bitcoin was not only a currency that allowed for markets truly free of state intervention on the one hand, but also a currency that obscured personal details during illicit activity on the other. On this matter, Austrian monetary theorists have little to say on whether unlawful transactions are integral (or, in normative terms, desirable) for the creation of money. They also disregard the role of meaning in the instantiation of money given that meaning is supposedly disconnected from a commodity’s ‘use value’. In contrast, we assert that meaning can be essential for sustaining the collective understanding of a market device’s purpose. Zelizerian conceptions of money are useful in this regard. For Zelizer (2000), ‘every currency attaches to a circuit of exchange and every circuit of exchange includes a concrete set of meaningful social relations’ (p. 385). If the understanding shared among these social relations becomes opaque or is challenged directly, then the circuits of exchange are vulnerable to reorganization as well. To early adopters, the bitcoin currency was radical, and they produced and reproduced it as such. While some in the community greatly admired the software’s technological ingenuity and the currency’s emulation of gold in digital form, the majority were attracted to its radical nature, namely that it was decentralized, unaffiliated with the state and ideal for buying illegal drugs and other products with near anonymity (Popper, 2015; Shaw, 2016). This community, which had long sought a viable private, digital currency to compete with fiat money, made bitcoin radical. Nothing innate to bitcoin forced movement actors to spend it on illicit goods and services or operate businesses that refused to acquire the proper licenses. (In fact, the first notable transmissions of bitcoin were benign, including donations to those interested in the project and orders of pizza.) Nevertheless, they seized upon the new system and currency as means of fulfilling immediate wants and enacting their visions of ideal society, all of which tended to be unconventional—that is, radical. Performativity is relevant to Bitcoin in that Austrian monetary theory appeared to inform Bitcoin’s design; similarly, the initial market for bitcoins reflects the theory’s arguments for how commodities are adopted as currencies. The genesis of Bitcoin and its currency also support MacKenzie and Millo’s (2013) arguments that performativity is a sustained process of making markets conform to economic theory, which requires all sorts of work, coordination and altruistic behavior—and most fundamentally to our case, shared meanings and normative commitments. But Bitcoin is also, in a sense, a story of failed performativity. In what follows we advance the argument that Bitcoin faced, and fell victim to, the problem of sustaining a shared, radical meaning for a market device in the face of a powerful opposition that saw the device differently. 5.2 The limits of performativity, or how bitcoin moved beyond the movement’s control Bitcoin illustrates a point made by MacKenzie and Millo (2003) in their analysis of derivatives markets that markets do not emerge from economists and economic theory alone (p. 139). While economics does have persuasive power, interpersonal networks that are infused with moral commitments and shared meanings are essential to sustaining the social relations that render a performed phenomenon durable. In the second part of our analysis, we focus on the Bitcoin movement’s loss of definitional control over its market device and the non-movement actors who stepped in during this impasse to legitimize bitcoin in a way that suited their interests. We start by describing the mainstream coverage of bitcoin’s use in the Silk Road drug marketplace and the damaging hack of the online currency exchange Mt Gox. We, then, grapple with the fallout of these critical junctures, which culminated in the IRS classifying bitcoin and other digital currencies as property in March of 2014. Silk Road and Mt Gox were the market institutions driving the rise in the price of bitcoin from 2009 to 2011. On January 27, 2011 Ross Ulbricht launched Silk Road, which would become the movement’s first major business and one that enabled bitcoin to function as a currency.26 Within two months, the site had gained 150 members.27 Following Austrian monetary dictates, bitcoin was gaining value as a currency due to its utility as a market device: it made exchange for drugs easier and, till this point in time, was not subject to wild swings in price. In May of 2011 alone more than 1 000 people had registered on Silk Road.28 During this month, Ulbricht temporarily shut down the site so that he could get the new version online. While the site was down, the price of bitcoin dipped; when the site came back online, the price rebounded.29 This led the Bitcoin project’s primary developer, Gavin Andresen, to believe that businesses such as Silk Road were determining the price of bitcoin.30 If Silk Road served as the first practical application for bitcoin’s use as a currency, then Mt Gox was the first service that made acquiring bitcoins easier for the broader public. The service was quickly embraced by those who did not wish to acquire bitcoins via the increasingly expensive hardware for mining them. This development was not lost on Bitcoin’s most prominent evangelists, including Roger Ver: ‘[P]rices will only continue to rise if people begin using bitcoins for their everyday transactions … .We should be focusing on making it easy for everyone to use bitcoins,’ he said.31 On its first day of trading, the exchange experienced a volume of 20 BTC (the denomination of bitcoin); by the fall that figure was closer to 50 000 per day.32 The overwhelming amount of traffic made managing Mt Gox difficult for the staff of one. It received a number of user complaints in 2010 involving delayed payments that went through the PayPal account of Mt. Gox’s owner, Jed McCaleb. Shortly thereafter, PayPal froze McCaleb’s account. Despite adding another person to help run it, McCaleb’s exchange was hacked for $45 000 in BTC at the end of 2010, frustrating customers and spurring the establishment of competing exchanges.33 Problems for the Bitcoin market—and, by extension, its movement—magnified in June of 2011 with the presence of two critical junctures. Specifically, the pop culture website Gawker published an exposé about Silk Road, highlighting bitcoin as the medium that made the online drug purchases possible.34 A few days later, Mt Gox was hacked for a second time.35 This haul was much bigger than the one in the year prior, with hackers stealing 260 000 bitcoins. This forced the site’s new owner, Mark Karpelès, to take Mt Gox offline temporarily. In times of negative publicity, formal organizations often mobilize public relations officers in an attempt to take control of the narrative with a coherent message that conveys a sense of resolve. As a decentralized and open-source project, Bitcoin did not have leadership or representative organizations that could respond to public scrutiny. Movement actors mainly promoted the software in alcoves of the Internet where computer programmers and tech enthusiasts were most likely to find the software compelling.36 For his part, Nakamoto recommended the movement keep a low profile for fear of any government shutting down the project.37 Indeed, troubling activity dominated the early Bitcoin market (Figure 3) and justifications for prosecution, if history was any guide, were abundant. Movement actors saw such autonomy as a feature, not a bug, yet solidarity was arguably needed in this instance to proclaim bitcoin as a currency meant to challenge the state’s monopoly over the creation of money. Figure 3. View largeDownload slide Unethical activity in the early Bitcoin market. Sources: BitcoinTalk (2014) ‘List of Major Bitcoin Heists, Thefts, Hacks, Scams, and Losses’, accessed at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php? topic=576337#post_toc_17/ on May 3, 2019. Popper (2015); Vigna and Casey (2015); Eha (2017); ProQuest News & Newspapers (2018) ‘Search for keyword “bitcoin”, January 2009–December 2013’. Notes: ‘Enforcement’ includes criminal charges and cease-and-desist letters. ‘Collaborative meetings’ include meetings between Bitcoin representatives and some combination of politicians and state regulators. ‘Rules’ include government regulation, guidance and judicial rulings. ‘Inquiries’ include requests from government agencies and Congressional committees for information on Bitcoin. Figure 3. View largeDownload slide Unethical activity in the early Bitcoin market. Sources: BitcoinTalk (2014) ‘List of Major Bitcoin Heists, Thefts, Hacks, Scams, and Losses’, accessed at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php? topic=576337#post_toc_17/ on May 3, 2019. Popper (2015); Vigna and Casey (2015); Eha (2017); ProQuest News & Newspapers (2018) ‘Search for keyword “bitcoin”, January 2009–December 2013’. Notes: ‘Enforcement’ includes criminal charges and cease-and-desist letters. ‘Collaborative meetings’ include meetings between Bitcoin representatives and some combination of politicians and state regulators. ‘Rules’ include government regulation, guidance and judicial rulings. ‘Inquiries’ include requests from government agencies and Congressional committees for information on Bitcoin. Absent this solidarity, Bitcoin’s mission was ambiguous. Under a pseudonym, Silk Road’s operator did voice his libertarian views in the article from Gawker, saying, ‘The state is the primary source of violence, oppression, theft and all forms of coercion.’38 Similarly, a Silk Road user quoted in the article said, ‘I’m a libertarian anarchist and I believe that anything that’s not violent should not be criminalized.’ But the political and economic ideas of Silk Road were not mirrored in the most popular sources of media. Their stories overstated Silk Road’s function as a marketplace for illegal drugs while underplaying Nakamoto’s political motivations and the technological innovation undergirding the bitcoin currency. With respect to the Mt Gox hack, nobody came to the company’s defense in the media. In this environment, politicians and state officials could freely demonize the new technology for its association with the online drug market. US Senator Charles Schumer was the first, calling the bitcoin currency a ‘disguise’ for purchasing drugs.39 That tenor continued through 2012. (See Figure 4 for a breakdown of the state’s increasing involvement in the Bitcoin market.) For instance, a task force of several federal agencies began an undercover investigation of Silk Road in March of 2012.40 One month later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a report addressing Bitcoin’s presence in criminal activity.41 Figure 4. View largeDownload slide US government action at the federal and state levels toward digital currencies. Notes: Bitcoin firms did not raise any money in 2009 or 2010. Sources:Popper (2015); Vigna and Casey (2015); Mullan (2016); Eha (2017); ProQuest News & Newspapers (2018) ‘Search for keyword “bitcoin”, January 2009–December 2013’. Figure 4. View largeDownload slide US government action at the federal and state levels toward digital currencies. Notes: Bitcoin firms did not raise any money in 2009 or 2010. Sources:Popper (2015); Vigna and Casey (2015); Mullan (2016); Eha (2017); ProQuest News & Newspapers (2018) ‘Search for keyword “bitcoin”, January 2009–December 2013’. On the surface, Bitcoin appeared to emerge from the Silk Road and Mt Gox scandals damaged but not defeated. Despite governmental attention, the price of a bitcoin was $14 at the end of 2012 and holding steady.42 Additionally, Silk Road was growing in volume, with about $1.2 million worth of bitcoins being exchanged each month.43 But several other businesses that participated in the exchange of US dollars to bitcoins—from payment processors to the exchanges themselves—were not faring as well. Suffering repeated hacking attempts, many of the first Bitcoin businesses sought investors from the worlds of Wall Street and Silicon Valley to provide cash reserves and finance larger, more experienced staffs that could respond to customer complaints and develop stronger security protocols for customers’ bitcoin storage. These investors, from firms such as SecondMarket and Andreessen Horowitz, were of a different breed than those in the Bitcoin movement. They never intended to buy drugs with bitcoin but recognized it as a ‘borderless’ token—backed by a revolutionary software—that was especially valuable to those looking to diversify their assets and to citizens in countries like Argentina with currencies prone to drastic inflation. Such conceptualizations, save for their stateless quality, were out of step with the Bitcoin movement's mission to treat bitcoin as a median of exchange. For investors, bitcoin showed promise as a store of value, much like real estate. In their eyes, investing in Bitcoin companies was worthwhile in order to provide a market architecture that prevented the value of bitcoin from plummeting. Doing so meant cultivating companies that would not get hacked, could respond promptly to customer concerns and would not break the law. With this long-term vision, investors began purchasing large quantities of bitcoin, driving the price up 70% from January to February of 2013, with it reaching $260 on April 10 of that year.44 In effect, their devouring of bitcoins was destroying bitcoin’s practicality as a currency. With the value of a bitcoin (priced alongside fiat currencies) constantly and wildly changing, merchants outside of the ‘dark web’ were deterred from pricing anything in BTC. Further, investors were bringing their own store of value into being: as investors’ large purchases of bitcoins caused bitcoin’s value to increase, they held onto the tokens, thus removing them from circulation and capitalizing on their popularity and scarcity. The Bitcoin market was now bifurcating. In one realm were actors treating bitcoin as currency to make pseudonymous purchases, mostly of illegal goods. In the other realm were financial elites acquiring outstanding bitcoins and funding companies, such as those that built computer processors, that made bitcoin acquisition more efficient and reliable.45 (See Figure 5 for a representation of the Bitcoin market’s growth.) As one Silicon Valley venture capitalist stated, ‘[M]y interest in the Bitcoin ecosystem is not ideological but mercenary.’46 Notably, straddling those two realms were the movement actors continuing to operate the market’s first businesses such as Mt Gox and payment processor BitInstant. They were in the unique position of simultaneously harnessing the Bitcoin network to achieve their political aims and keeping their businesses afloat. This proved difficult when faced with hacking attempts, licensing requirements, overwhelming traffic, inexperienced staff members and fresh competition managed and financed by outside actors who did not embrace the movement’s politics or understanding of what bitcoin was. When members of the Bitcoin community started discussions about establishing a Bitcoin press center, arguments erupted on the BitcoinTalk website among the politically-minded social movement actors and the newer cohort of entrepreneurs and investors over how Bitcoin should be represented. On the message board, Erik Voorhees, a Bitcoin activist who had helped build BitInstant and other Bitcoin products, stated, ‘Bitcoin is a movement, and those trying to distill it into nothing more than a cute new technology are kidding themselves and doing a terrible disservice to this community.’47 Figure 5: View largeDownload slide Growth of the Bitcoin market. Sources: CoinDesk (2014) ‘State of Bitcoin 2014’, Q1, Q2, Q3 report, accessed at https://www.coindesk.com/research/ on May 3, 2019; Popper (2015); Vigna and Casey (2015); Eha (2017); CoinDesk (2018) ‘Bitcoin Venture Capital’, accessed at https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-venture-capital/ on May 3, 2019; ProQuest News & Newspapers (2018) ‘Search for keyword “bitcoin”, January 2009–December 2014’. Figure 5: View largeDownload slide Growth of the Bitcoin market. Sources: CoinDesk (2014) ‘State of Bitcoin 2014’, Q1, Q2, Q3 report, accessed at https://www.coindesk.com/research/ on May 3, 2019; Popper (2015); Vigna and Casey (2015); Eha (2017); CoinDesk (2018) ‘Bitcoin Venture Capital’, accessed at https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-venture-capital/ on May 3, 2019; ProQuest News & Newspapers (2018) ‘Search for keyword “bitcoin”, January 2009–December 2014’. State actors began taking an inquisitive—as opposed to purely prosecutorial—stance toward Bitcoin in the spring of 2013. Staff from the US Senate Homeland Security Committee, Thomas Reuters and the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, were planning a one-day conference in Washington, DC for policymakers and law enforcement to discuss the budding virtual economy of which Bitcoin was a part.48 Members of these organizations asked individuals who were knowledgeable about Bitcoin to participate in the conference and establish a task force to study the benefits and risks of digital currencies. They included Jerry Brito (a technology policy researcher at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center), Patrick Murck (a lawyer who represented Bitcoin companies) and Jim Harper (a fellow at the Cato Institute). Importantly, these individuals were not part of Bitcoin’s anarchic beginnings—they had not started businesses running afoul of regulations, advocated for an end to state-backed currencies, developed any code for the Bitcoin software, nor maintained a presence on the Bitcoin discussion boards. In short, they were not identified with the Bitcoin movement. At the meetings for the task force, Brito, Murck and Harper played up the role of Bitcoin’s software rather than currency. They stated that the benefits of Bitcoin outweighed the risks, and that unnecessary regulatory burden would hamper innovation and [somehow] benefit illicit actors in the end.49 When the conference took place in June, Murck said that the Bitcoin community was willing to cooperate with regulators in developing a market for law-abiding Bitcoin companies.50 Following his remarks, Murck had a friendly conversation with FinCEN director Jennifer Shasky Calvery, whose agency had already issued a broad guidance51 in March of 2013 that pressed digital currency processors to register as money services businesses. In the conversation, she expressed an interest in the technology and an openness to how her agency would enforce rules that affected Bitcoin.52 During the summer of 2013, Murck also began discussions with staff members from the office of Senator Thomas Carper who were studying Bitcoin. Carper and Senator Thomas Coburn were on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and they had been reaching out to several federal agencies about their stance toward digital currencies.53 Though the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported an ‘aggressive posture’ toward the relationship between digital currencies and black markets, most agencies admitted that the technology could enhance the existing financial system. Ben Bernanke, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, referred to comments made by a former vice chairman of the central bank from a hearing in 1995 on financial innovation: ‘[W]hile these types of innovations may pose risks … there are also areas in which they may hold long-term promise, particularly if the innovations promote a faster, more secure, and more efficient payment system.’54 Governmental attention toward Bitcoin was spreading. For instance, the DHS had recently confiscated $5 million from Mt Gox’s two American banks for allegedly violating federal money-transmitting laws.55 In response, many of the newer Bitcoin companies that were backed by millions in investments made an effort to be in compliance with state and federal agencies.56 Some were further ahead than others. Barry Silbert, the chief executive officer of SecondMarket who had buying bitcoins since 2012, leveraged his knowledge of rules set by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the recently enacted Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, which lifted several restrictions on entrepreneurs, to start a fund for accredited investors—i.e. people with a net worth greater than $1 million—that would only speculate on digital currencies. According to one SecondMarket employee, ‘Ultra-high-net-worth people in the world hear about Bitcoin and want to get involved … [and with our fund] they can just say, “Here’s a million dollars—give me a million dollars’ worth of exposure to bitcoin.” No headaches.’57 If any venture exemplified bitcoin’s transition from a radical currency into an investment, it was this. Murck’s worthwhile networking with regulators and politicians was on full display in November of 2013, when the US Congress held two hearings on Bitcoin and its currency. Murck made sure that the most palatable people from the Bitcoin community, especially those from companies that had received venture capital funding, were there to provide testimony. At the first hearing, regulators balanced their concerns over bitcoin’s ‘illicit’ and ‘legitimate’ uses. This contrasted with their disposition toward digital currencies such as Liberty Reserve, whose operators the Department of Justice had charged with money laundering that May.58 Through bitcoin the ‘radical currency’ regulators could see the promise of Bitcoin the technology and the entrepreneurial spirit of its advocates at the hearings. Responding to Senator Carper’s question about whether Bitcoin should be left alone like the early Internet was, FinCen director Calvery said, ‘Innovation is a very important part of our economy. It’s something to be proud of.’ Jeremy Allaire, co-founder of Circle Internet Financial, which had just launched with $9 million in funding, matched the regulator’s sentiment, saying that stifling innovation through draconian regulation would mean losing a new industry to offshore locales or China.59 The next day, another Senatorial committee hosted a similar panel of regulators, Bitcoin business leaders and technology scholars. Again, Bitcoin’s technology proved more alluring than how bad actors were transacting with bitcoins. Indeed, Senator Schumer, who had called on federal authorities to shut down Silk Road in 2011, was now saying, ‘I do not want to shut down or stamp out bitcoin.’60 The hearings were a victory for the financial elites who were now injecting most of the capital into the Bitcoin market. The nation’s top financial regulators had essentially said that they would let the market develop; shortly thereafter, the price of bitcoin increased about 20 percent.61 Comments from the deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China that citizens were free to participate in the Bitcoin market also helped fuel the precipitous climb in bitcoin’s price.62 Decisions made by government officials were clearly affecting the value of bitcoin. Following Austrian monetary theory bitcoin this was not; instead, the influence government over the price of a currency—even one it did not mint—was chartalism in action. Put another way, market actors were granting that states had more power in determining what could and could not be money than a commodity’s degree of demand, liquidity and scarcity in an unfettered marketplace. The Congressional hearings demonstrated the state’s willingness to embrace Bitcoin’s technology as a revolutionary payment system and the currency as something that it had to tolerate given that many of the individuals backing Bitcoin companies were also holding a large number of bitcoins. If the state was to declare the ownership of bitcoins illegal, then investors would also shutter their companies that supported the currency. But bitcoin, in the way the majority of users treated it, was less a currency63 than a speculative investment at this stage. The IRS reflected this reality in their determination of bitcoin and other digital currencies as property in March of 2014.64 As such, net profits from selling or transacting in bitcoins was subject to capital gains taxes. American bitcoin users would owe money according to their tax bracket and the size of their gains in bitcoin for the year. Further, bitcoin was not ‘money’, regardless of whether one subscribed to Austrian or chartalist conceptions of it. Americans would not be allowed to pay their taxes in bitcoin, nor would they be able to enjoy its previous degree of liquidity, due to a concentrated class of wealthy individuals hoarding their bitcoins for speculation rather than circulating them in retail transactions. The social movement actors, who had been so crucial to the early Bitcoin market and championed bitcoin as the successor to state-backed currencies, were generally unenthusiastic about the state’s collaboration with venture capitalists, pro-government entrepreneurs, technologists, and lawyers in negotiating the fate of Bitcoin. Neither Roger Ver, Charlie Shrem, Erik Voorhees or other prominent actors who viewed bitcoin as a radical currency participated in the conferences, private meetings or Congressional hearings with US regulators. Dissatisfied with the way centralized Bitcoin businesses like Coinbase were coming to resemble traditional banks, collecting personal information to satisfy regulatory requirements, Ver shifted his investments into a company, named Blockchain, that protected customers’ information with decentralized technology. The company was not financed by Silicon Valley investors, and its founder believed in Nakamoto’s vision of building a better payment system and form of money.65 Meanwhile, Shrem, Voorhees and Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht all experienced troubles with the law. Shrem’s company, BitInstant, went offline for the last time in July of 2013.66 Worse, the US Drug Enforcement Agency later arrested Shrem for money laundering conspiracy and other charges. He served a year in prison.67 For his part, Voorhees moved to Panama, where he settled a case with the US Securities and Exchange Commission related to offering unregistered securities for his bitcoin gambling website.68 Lastly, and most notoriously, Ulbricht was arrested and later sentenced to life in prison for his role in operating an anonymous black market for drugs.69 In this context, the Bitcoin proponents from Silicon Valley and Wall Street were happy to emerge as the reasonable and law-abiding alternative to the anti-state fringe. 6. Conclusions The emergence of Bitcoin and the associated changes that followed strengthen our grasp of the relationship between social movements and markets. Bitcoin demonstrates the ability of social movements to mobilize a market device, such as a digital currency, to not only erect a market, but challenge the state’s monopoly on creating money. The performativity of Austrian monetary theory animates our account. Our evidence suggests that Bitcoin’s creator drew upon general tenets of the theory in designing the software. Additionally, the market institutions that grew to support the bitcoin currency appeared to follow Austrian-theoretical dictates for how media of exchange are established and adopted—although, as we show, the effort was ultimately derailed and bitcoin never achieved that status of what the classical Austrian economists would call ‘money’. Our analysis reveals that social movements actors—rather than simply economists and financiers within the status quo—can participate in performing economics as well. At the same time, and building upon discussions of performativity’s normative dimension, if a movement is to be successful in mounting a durable challenge to a device like fiat currency, then it must maintain a network of committed adherents that embraces the same rhetorical mission. With the Bitcoin movement, that mission was communicating that the bitcoin currency was radical. In Zelizerian fashion, this meant ‘counterearmarking’ money as the domain of the state to the domain of private markets. Generally undertheorized in cultural conceptions of money, however, is that powerful structures—such as the state, finance and the capitalism their alliance enables (on this, see Carruthers and Kim, 2011) can defend their monopoly over what money is by using their classificatory power. Here, too, Bitcoin is instructive in bridging themes within economic sociology. After the movement failed to successfully spread its message beyond its online circles and into halls political and financial power, the performative pursuit of Austrian monetary theory in the form of a successful anti-state currency was compromised. As financiers and other actors beyond the movement entered the Bitcoin space, they pushed for discussions with state regulators where they settled—without much disagreement—on a mutual understanding of what bitcoin ‘legitimately’, ‘officially’ was: an investment, and one that was good for finance and thus, after taxes, good for the state. The implication of this outcome is that proponents of an anti-state currency must, ironically, forge alliances with economic and political elites who also embrace the device’s definitional properties as ‘currency’ and ‘anti-state’. This might seem paradoxical at first, but in an era of Brexit and far-right governments that denounce social safety nets in favor of economic liberalism and austerity, the prospect of fringe politicians embracing a ‘pro-market’, ‘stateless’ currency seems less implausible than it once did. In light of bitcoin’s rise in price and adoption by mainstream actors, governments such as the US brought digital currencies into their ambit for the first time. Further, recognizing that bitcoin is the first digital currency to ‘survive’ attention from the state, the achievement implies that state legitimation of such a currency is necessary. The question remains whether a movement could overcome problems of collective action and achieve a durable and widespread anti-state currency, even if it must partner with extreme politicians and governments. Bitcoin’s mobilization of a technology suggests that it would inevitably be linked to private sector firms and their ability to reflect the movement’s ideals. (For a review of similar ‘technology-oriented and product-oriented movements,’ see Hess [2005].) Indeed, the Bitcoin movement’s method of action did not involve protesting to holders of political power but consisted of diffusing an alternative currency into the material culture through for-profit organizations. If the cooperative relationship between the movement and firms breaks down in some fashion, then the meaning of the technology is compromised as well. Movement actors founded and then flocked to Silk Road, Mt Gox and BitInstant, but when these outfits failed due to poor management (and in Silk Road’s case, being outwitted by law enforcement), entrepreneurs with different visions of Bitcoin’s technology and currency faced little resistance. Given that the ‘movement-oriented’ businesses had already proved deficient, then well-funded replacements with Silicon Valley sheen and day-to-day consistency were generally adequate for the average Bitcoin user. Thus, for an anti-state movement to successfully institutionalize a technology that remains grounded in radical ideals, market organizations that emerge to support the technology need to remain grounded in those ideals as well. This can be difficult when the technology is ‘money,’ but market actors have shown restraint in enriching themselves to the detriment of the whole in the past (e.g., MacKenzie and Millo, 2003). If the open-source movement from the early 1980s (see Moore, 2002) in any indication, then consumers will also play a pivotal role in preserving a technology’s radical meaning. As with deciding to use an open-source operating system like Minix—and retaining the movement’s ideals—over a private one like Microsoft Windows, anti-state actors on the Internet will need to decide if Bitcoin and its currency are worth the effort of ‘re-radicalizing’ or if they should move to another platform and currency. To be sure, cooptation will remain an issue for such radical and technology-oriented movements like Bitcoin. However, the term ‘cooptation is fraught (Coy and Heeden, 2005; Lapegna, 2014). Has a movement ‘failed’ if its mobilized device remains in the material culture? Digital currencies have sprouted into a multibillion-dollar industry, global in nature, whereas prior to bitcoin’s arrival in 2009 they were a small fraction of the economy and demonized by political elites. Now digital currencies are a legitimate asset class, and one which the state is happy to tax. At the same time, radical digital currencies based on Bitcoin’s technology, such as Anoncoin and Darkcoin, as well as newer online black markets have proliferated. For these efforts to materialize into a truly alternative economy driven by Austrian monetary theory will require ideologically committed entrepreneurs, political actors and elites. Although fantastical in its conception, such an outcome remains plausible in the current political–economic climate. Footnotes 1 We adopt the predominant stylistic distinction between bitcoin (the currency) and Bitcoin (variously used to denote the social movement, community of users, software and broader phenomenon). 2 China superseded the US as the largest market for bitcoins in 2017 before being overtaken by Japan (Young, 2017). 3 See Popper (2015, p. 338); Eha (2017, p. 31). Also see: Roberts (2018). For a deep investigation into Szabo and Nakamoto’s similarities, see https://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-nick-szabo/, last accessed on May 3, 2019. 4 For example, see David Gerard’s reasoning at https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/12/16/no-nick-szabo-wasnt-satoshi-in-2014-either/, last accessed on May 3, 2019. 5 Menger (1871 [2007]). 6 von Mises (1969 [2006]). 7 Hayek (1976). 8 The currency is much harder to obtain today because of its prohibitive cost, which relates to bitcoin’s failure as a currency. However, when Bitcoin launched, anyone with a computer and an Internet connection could acquire bitcoins by validating transactions. Moreover, the price of bitcoins on the exchanges was low. 9 Nakamoto (2008). 10 For example, see https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2006/06/menger-on-money-right-and-wrong.html and https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/03/logical-emergence-of-money-from-barter.html, which were both accessible on May 3, 2019. 11 Price (2015). 12 See https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html, last accessed on May 3, 2019. 13 For more on the relation between Austrian economics and libertarianism, see Burgin (2012) and Koenig (2016). 14 von Mises (1944 [2011], p. 55). 15 See his comment at http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source?commentId=2003008%3AComment%3A9562, last accessed on May 3, 2019. 16 Along with the code that validates bitcoin transaction, users can embed short written messages. For more on what this looked like in the first bitcoin transaction, see https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block, last accessed on May 3, 2019. 17 Nakamoto (2009, p. 1). 18 See his post at the P2P Foundation here: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source, last accessed on May 3, 2019. 19 See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=486149.msg5354626#msg5354626, last accessed on May 3, 2019, for the survey report. 20 Other notable members of the Bitcoin movement who held libertarian views included Jed McCaleb (founder of Mt Gox, the first Bitcoin business and exchange); Ross Ulbricht (founder of Silk Road); Erik Voorhees (founder of bitcoin gambling website SatoshiDice); Nic Cary (Chief Executive Officer of Blockchain.info); Gavin Andresen (head developer of the Bitcoin project); and Hal Finney (pioneering cryptographer and early user of Bitcoin). 21 Popper (2015, p. 29). 22 Eha (2017, p. 43). 23 Popper (2015, p. 48). 24 Ibid., p. 51. 25 Ibid., pp. 70–73; see https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=175.70;wap2, last accessed on May 3, 2019, for an early advertisement. 26 Vigna and Casey (2015, pp. 86–87). 27 Popper (2015, p. 75). 28 Ornsby (2014). 29 Popper (2015, p. 83). Although Bitcoin had no leader or formal management, it did consist of a handful of skilled programmers who worked on its code without compensation. 30 Ibid., p. 82. 31 Eha (2017, p. 46). 32 Vigna and Casey (2015, p. 82). 33 Popper (2015, pp. 67–68). 34 Chen (2011). 35 Popper (2015, p. 90). 36 They included channels on Internet Relay Chat, the ‘Cryptography’ mailing list on Metzdowd, the P2P Foundation, and Slashdot (Popper, 2015). 37 Popper (2015, p. 73). 38 Chen (2011). 39 NBC New York (2011) 40 Popper (2015, p. 121). 41 Federal Bureau of Investigation (2012). 42 See https://www.blockchain.com/charts/market-price?timespan=all, last accessed on May 3, 2019. 43 Christin (2013). 44 Popper (2015, pp. 180 and 207). 45 Ibid., pp. 191–192. 46 Liew (2013). 47 See the dispute here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=181168.180, last accessed on May 3, 2019. 48 Brito (2017). 49 Ibid. 50 Lee (2013b). 51 Department of the Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (2013). 52 Popper (2015, pp. 234–235). 53 Ibid., p. 235. 54 Eha (2017, pp. 207–208). 55 McCullagh (2013). 56 Popper (2015, p. 236). 57 Eha (2017, pp. 200–201). 58 See the press release here: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/manhattan-us-attorney-announces-charges-against-liberty-reserve-one-world-s-largest, last accessed on May 3, 2019. 59 View the hearing, ‘Beyond Silk Road: Potential Risks, Threats, and Promises of Virtual Currencies,’ here: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/beyond-silk-road-potential-risks-threats-and-promises-of-virtual-currencies, last accessed on May 3, 2019. 60 View the hearing, ‘The Present and Future Impact of Virtual Currency,’ here: https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/the-present-and-future-impact-of-virtual-currency, last accessed on May 3, 2019. 61 Brito (2017). 62 Popper (2015, p. 268). 63 See https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2n205b/an_area_chart_showing_the_distribution_of, last accessed on May 3, 2019 for a representation of the remarkable decrease in how often users moved (i.e. spent) their bitcoins over time. 64 Internal Revenue Service (2014). 65 Popper (2015, p. 239). 66 Eha (2017, p. 149). 67 See the Department of Justice press release here: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/manhattan-us-attorney-announces-charges-against-bitcoin-exchangers-including-ceo, last accessed on May 3, 2019. 68 Eha (2017, pp. 139–140). 69 Greenberg (2015). References Armstrong E. A. ( 2002 ) Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 1950-1994 , Chicago, IL , University of Chicago Press . Armstrong E. , Bernstein M. ( 2008 ) ‘ Culture, Power, and Institutions: A Multi-Institutional Politics Approach to Social Movements ’, Sociological Theory , 26 , 74 – 99 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Bair J. , Palpacuer F. ( 2012 ) ‘ From Varieties of Capitalism to Varieties of Activism: The Antisweatshop Movement in Comparative Perspective ’, Social Problems , 59 , 522 – 543 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS BraveTheWorld. ( 2018 ) ‘The Declaration of Bitcoin’s Independence’. YouTube. Accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=XQqZ9b0S0BY on September 18, 2018. Beach D. , Pedersen R. B. ( 2013 ) Process-Tracing Methods: Foundations and Guidelines , Ann Arbor, MI , University of Michigan Press . Bourdieu P. , Wacquant L. J. D. , Farage S. ( 1994 ) ‘ Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field ’, Sociological Theory , 12 , 1 – 18 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Brito J. ( 2017 ) ‘Bitcoin’s DC Debut: All Eyes Watch the US Government’s Response’, CoinDesk, accessed at https://www.coindesk.com/jerry-brito-bitcoin-milestones-bitcoins-dc-debut-all-eyes-watch-us-governments-response on May 3, 2019. Burgin A. ( 2012 ) The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression , Cambridge, MA , Harvard University Press . Callon M. ( 1998 ) ‘Introduction: The Embeddedness of Economic Markets in Economics’, In Callon M. (ed.) The Laws of the Markets , Oxford, UK , Blackwell Publishers . Carruthers B. G. , Kim J. ( 2011 ) ‘The Sociology of Finance’ , Annual Review of Sociology , 37 , 239 – 259 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Chen A. ( 2011 ) ‘The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable’, Gawker, accessed at http://gawker.com/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imag-30818160 on May 3, 2019. Christin N. ( 2013 ) ‘Traveling the Silk Road: A Measurement Analysis of a Large Anonymous Online Marketplace’, in Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on World Wide Web, New York, Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 213 – 224 . Coy P. G. , Heeden T. ( 2005 ) ‘A Stage Model of Social Movement Co-Optation: Community Meditation in the United States’ , The Sociological Quarterly , 46 , 405 – 435 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Department of the Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. ( 2013 ) ‘Application of FinCEN’s Regulations to Persons Administering, Exchanging, or Using Virtual Currencies’, Guidance, accessed at https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/FIN-2013-G001.pdf on May 3, 2019. Dodd N. ( 2018 ) ‘The Social Life of Bitcoin’ , Theory, Culture & Society , 35 , 35 – 56 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Dubuisson-Quellier S. ( 2013 ) ‘A Market Mediation Strategy: How Social Movements Seek to Change Firms’ Practices by Promoting New Principles of Product Valuation’ , Organization Studies , 34 , 683 – 703 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Eha B. P. ( 2017 ) How Money Got Free: Bitcoin and the Fight for the Future of Finance , London, Oneworld Publications Ltd. Federal Bureau of Investigation. ( 2012 ) ‘Bitcoin Virtual Currency: Unique Features Present Distinct Challenges for Deterring Illicit Activity’, Intelligence Assessment, accessed at http://cryptome.org/2012/05/fbi-bitcoin.pdf on May 3, 2019. Fligstein N. ( 1996 ) ‘Markets as Politics’: A Political-Culture Approach to Market Institutions’ , American Sociological Review , 61 , 656 – 673 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Fligstein N. , Calder R. ( 2015 ) ‘Architecture of Markets’. In Scott R. , Kosslyn S. (eds) Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences , Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Ganz M. ( 2000 ) ‘Resources and Resourcefulness: Strategic Capacity in the Unionization of California Agriculture, 1959–1966’ , American Journal of Sociology , 105 , 1003 – 1062 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Greenberg A. ( 2015 ) ‘Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison’, Wired, accessed at https://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-creator-ross-ulbricht-sentenced-life-prison/ on May 3, 2019. Gusfield J. R. ( 1986 ) Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement , Champaign, IL , University of Illinois Press . Hargrave T. J. , Van De Ven A. H. ( 2006 ) ‘ A Collective Action Model of Institutional Innovation ’, Academy of Management Review , 31 , 864 – 888 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Hayek F. A. ( 1976 ) The Denationalization of Money–The Argument Refined: An Analysis of the Theory and Practice of Concurrent Currencies , London , The Institute of Economic Affairs . Hess D. J. ( 2005 ) ‘ Technology- and Product-Oriented Movements: Approximating Social Movement Studies and Science and Technology Studies ’, Science, Technology, & Human Values , 30 , 515 – 535 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Ingham G. ( 2004 ) The Nature of Money , Malden, MA , Polity Press . Internal Revenue Service ( 2014 ) ‘Notice 2014-21’, accessed at https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-14-21.pdf on September 17, 2014. King B. G. , Pearce N. A. ( 2010 ) ‘The Contentiousness of Markets: Politics, Social Movements, and Institutional Change in Markets’ , Annual Review of Sociology , 36 , 249 – 267 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Koenig A. ( 2016 ) A Beginner’s Guide to Bitcoin and Austrian Economics , Munich , FinanzBuch . Lapegna P. ( 2014 ) ‘ The Problem with “Cooptation” ’, States, Power, and Societies (Newsletter for the American Sociological Association’s Political Sociology Section) , 20 , 7 – 10 . Lee T. B. ( 2013a ) ‘Feds shut down payment network Liberty Reserve. Is Bitcoin next?’, Washington Post, accessed at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/28/feds-shut-down-payment-network-liberty-reserve-is-bitcoin-next/? utm_term=.7a6ba4055507 on September 17, 2018. Lee T. B. ( 2013b ) ‘Here’s how Bitcoin charmed Washington’, The Washington Post, accessed at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/11/21/heres-how-bitcoin-charmed-washington/?utm_term=.4d358530c932 on May 3, 2019. Liew J. ( 2013 ) ‘Why VCs Love the Bitcoin Market’, TechCrunch, accessed at https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/05/why-do-vcs-care-about-bitcoin/ on May 3, 2019. Lofland J. ( 1996 ) Social Movement Organizations: Guide to Research on Insurgent Realities , New York , Walter de Gruyter . Loveman M. ( 2005 ) ‘ The Modern State and the Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power ’, American Journal of Sociology , 110 , 1651 – 1683 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS MacKenzie D. , Millo Y. ( 2003 ) ‘ Constructing a Market, Performing Theory: The Historical Sociology of a Financial Derivatives Exchange ’, American Journal of Sociology , 109 , 107 – 145 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Maurer B. , Nelms T. C. , Swartz L. ( 2013 ) ‘ When Perhaps the Real Problem Is Money Itself!”: The Practical Materiality of Bitcoin ’, Social Semiotics , 23 , 261 – 277 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS McAdam D. , Tarrow S. , Tilly C. ( 1996 ) ‘ To Map Contentious Politics ’, Mobilization: An International Quarterly , 1 , 17 – 34 . McAdam C. , Tarrow S. , Tilly C. ( 2001 ) Dynamics of Contention , Cambridge, UK , Cambridge University Press . McCullagh D. ( 2013 ) ‘Homeland Security cuts off Dwolla bitcoin transfers’, CNET, accessed at https://www.cnet.com/news/homeland-security-cuts-off-dwolla-bitcoin-transfers/ on May 3, 2019. Menger C. ( 2007 [1871]). Principles of Economics , Auburn, AL , Ludwig von Mises Institute . Moore J. ( 2002 ) Revolution OS , Los Angeles , Wonderview Productions . Moore K. ( 1999 ) ‘Political Protest and Institutional Change: The Anti-Vietnam War Movement and American Science’. In Giugni M. , McAdam D. , Tilly C. (eds) How Social Movements Matter , Minneapolis , University of Minnesota Press , pp. 97 – 118 . Mora G. C. ( 2014 ) ‘Cross-Field Effects and Ethnic Classification: The Institutionalization of Hispanic Panethnicity, 1965 to 1990’ , American Sociological Review , 79 , 183 – 210 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Mullan P. C. ( 2016 ) A History of Digital Currency in the United States , New York , Palgrave Macmillan . Nakamoto S. ( 2008 ) ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System’, accessed at https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf on May 3, 2019. NBC New York. ( 2011 ) ‘Schumer Pushes to Shut Down Online Drug Marketplace’, accessed at https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Schumer-Calls-on-Feds-to-Shut-Down-Online-Drug-Marketplace-123187958.html on May 3, 2019. Ornsby E. ( 2014 ) Silk Road , Sydney , Pan Macmillan Australia . Pagliery J. ( 2014 ) Bitcoin: And the Future Money , Chicago , Triumph Books . Paschel T. S. ( 2016 ) Becoming Black Political Subjects: Movements and Ethno-Racial Rights in Columbia and Brazil , Princeton, NJ , Princeton University Press . Price R. ( 2015 ) ‘The man everyone thinks is the creator of bitcoin gave a speech discussing the history of the technology’, Business Insider, accessed at https://www.businessinsider.com/nick-szabo-ethereum-bitcoin-blockchain-history-satoshi-nakamoto-2015-11 on May 3, 2019. Popper N. ( 2015 ) Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money , New York , HarperCollins . Rao H. , Morrill C. , Zald M. ( 2000 ) ‘ Power Plays: How Social Movements and Collective Action Create New Organizational Forms ’, Research in Organizational Behavior , 22 , 237 – 281 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Roberts J.F. ( 2018 ) ‘Is There Any Doubt This Man Created Bitcoin?’, Fortune, accessed at http://fortune.com/2018/10/31/satoshi-identity/ on May 3, 2019. Schneiberg M. ( 2007 ) ‘What’s On the Path? Path Dependence, Organizational Diversity and the Problem of Institutional Change in the US Economy, 1900-1950’ , Socio-Economic Review , 5 , 47 – 80 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Schneiberg M. , King M. , Smith T. ( 2008 ) ‘ Social Movements and Organizational Form: Cooperative Alternatives to Corporations in the American Insurance, Dairy, and Grain Industries ’, American Sociological Review , 73 , 635 – 667 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Shaw L. ( 2016 ) ‘The Meanings of New Money: Social Constructions of Value in the Rise of Digital Currencies’, PhD Dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Washington. SourceForge ( 2018 ) ‘Download Statistics, Date Range: 2009-01-01 to 2014-12-31’, accessed at https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/stats/map? dates=2009-01-01+to+2014-12-31 on September 18, 2018. Vigna P. , Casey M. J. ( 2015 ) The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order , New York , St Martin’s Press . Vogel D. ( 1995 ) Trading up: Consumer and Environmental Regulation in a Global Economy , Cambridge, MA , Harvard University Press . von Mises L. ( 1969 [2006]) Economic Freedom and Interventionism , Indianapolis, IN , Liberty Fund . von Mises L. V. ( 1944 [2011]) Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War , edited by Bien Greaves B. , Indianapolis, IN , Liberty Fund . Young J. ( 2017 ) ‘Japan Becomes Largest Bitcoin Market as Traders Leave China’, Cointelegraph, accessed at https://cointelegraph.com/news/japan-becomes-largest-bitcoin-market-as-traders-leave-China on September 18, 2018. Zelizer V. ( 1997 ) The Social Meaning of Money , Princeton, NJ , Princeton University Press . Zelizer V. ( 2000 ) ‘Fine Tuning the Zelizer View’ , Economy and Society , 29 , 383 – 389 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Movement to market, currency to property: the rise and fall of Bitcoin as an anti-state movement, 2009–2014
JF - Socio-Economic Review
DO - 10.1093/ser/mwz023
DA - 2019-01-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/movement-to-market-currency-to-property-the-rise-and-fall-of-bitcoin-o4aAOg5m0T
SP - 109
VL - 17
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -