%0 Journal Article
%T The Socio
%A Adam Hayes
%J Theory, Culture & Society
%@ 1460-3616
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0263276419826218
%X Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and blockchains have become buzzwords in the media and are attracting increasing academic interest, mainly from the fields of computer science and financial economics. In this essay, I argue that cryptocurrencies and blockchains are important objects of general social science research and thought, but not for their ¡®moneyness¡¯ per se. Through a historical sociology of the antecedents and discourse leading up to Bitcoin, I show that it was never meant to be ¡®money¡¯ in the economic sense, but rather a solution to a technical puzzle for preventing opportunistic actors from double-spending digital ¡®coins,¡¯ as well as a fervent ideology surrounding online privacy and infringement of individual rights in the digital age. Drawing from themes in science and technology studies, I suggest that Bitcoin and other ¡®cryptoassets¡¯ are properly socio-technological assemblages that constitute new and important objects of social inquiry that must be understood beyond the myopic context of crypto-money. I conclude by proposing three alternative ontologies for blockchains relevant to economic, political, and social life: as systems of accounting, as organizational forms, and as institutions in their own right
%K assemblages
%K Bitcoin
%K blockchain
%K economy
%K money
%K technology
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0263276419826218