Politics of Bitcoin
by David Golumbia · first published 2016
10mentions
7recommended by
10HN commenters
2017–2022first – last mentioned
70% recommend20% neutral10% critical
Why HN recommends it
Argues that Bitcoin's ideology traces back to right-wing and libertarian politics and gold-bug thinking. It is short but interesting, and serves as a standard source for that critique.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗Literally. Bitcoin politics is goldbug politics with the buzzword changed. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/the-conspiracist-gold-b... The key book nailing down every dot of this is "The Politics of Bitcoin" by David Golumbia. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1517901804/
on “China's Central Bank Bans ICOs” ↗Take a look at the book "The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism," https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Bitcoin-Right-Wing-Extremism... David Columbia, the author, provides evidence of right-wing associations with cryptocurrency.
on “U.S. insurrectionists received $500k in bitcoins from French donor” ↗People wondering why I say this need to read “The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism” by David Golumbia and “Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain” by David Gerard. This stuff is based on crackpot economics so it’s inherently a scam.
on “Israel’s most-hyped initial coin offerings were scams, ex-employees allege” ↗…than a year ago with this post https://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/crypto.html, which ends on a bizarre claim about a link between crypto and right-wing extremism: > David Golumbia’s excellent book The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism outlines the rabbit-hole effect that this ecosystem is having on software engineers onboarding them into deeper forms of right-wing extremism. This is not crypto-specific,…
on “Decentralized Woo Hoo” ↗…inherently right-leaning. I guess really the current social/market/media/regulatory environment is easier to exploit by the right. For a deeper consideration of this topic check out David Golumbia's book The Politics of Bitcoin.
on “When Did Crypto Become Republican?” ↗> some nerds playing around with cryptography to try and create a new trustless financial system Okay, this is really not what's at play here. I would highly encourage you to read The Politics of Bitcoin by David Golumbia, and will not participate further in this discussion with someone who has personal investments at stakes and who can therefore not be neutral and is already using fallacious arguments…
on “GoDaddy Statement on Eth.link Domain Registration” ↗David Golumbia has written a book called “The Politics of Bitcoin - Software as Right-Wing Extremism” which goes into the connection between cryptocurrency and far-right ideology. Here is an interview with him: https://overcast.fm/+ZpQA7ciS0
on “I am in favour of the term “Web4” to describe small, local, personal, private...” ↗…time this guy publishes a paper about crypto, there's a bull market. * David Golumbia, “Cryptocurrencies Aren’t Currencies. They Aren’t Stocks, Either” (Motherboard, Aug 22, 2017) * David Golumbia, The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism (University of Minnesota, 2016), chapter 5
on “The blockchain/cryptocurrency space is mostly fraudulent” ↗…how community standards and governance can mitigate them. I don't really see a lot of answers in this article besides ill-defined ethical compromise of developers. I skimmed the book he mentioned (The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism) which sounds interesting but it doesn't really make its own case very well: half of the "extremist" citations are from anonymous online commenters and you can't go 2…
on “The Haskell Elephant in the Room” ↗