Philosophy of Digital Currencies


Book Description

Current systems are failing the poor because these systems are unable to provide the financial inclusion needed for basic subsistence and commerce, which in turn would drive micro- and macro-economic growth. This book introduces the reader to a new way of thinking about how value can be created, captured, measured, and understood, economically and financially, and within the context of social contracts. It underscores the need to revisit such models through technological advancements, namely, Industrial Revolution 4.0, in order to solve pressing global issues such as economic inclusion and poverty eradication. The book proposes that for humanity to make the leap forward and for any real sustainable development to occur, the world needs a disruptive approach to value creation using currency systems, considering that currencies underpin value exchange. This disruption will result in a level of decentralization that facilitates peer-to-peer value exchange and drives financial inclusion, all of which should be underscored by a new, digital social contract. The author asserts that a time-based digital currency could address these issues by creating a new and truly inclusive currency model that allows economies to gain more value than previously possible. In addition, by leveraging 4IR technologies, a currency system can be designed where each unit of money accurately reflects the context and range of socio-economic factors that influence each human interaction. This book is aimed at futurists, technologists, researchers, policymakers, and anyone that is curious about how technology could make a difference in our collective futures. It cuts across a range of subject areas from economics, finance, philosophy, innovation to social development and takes an interdisciplinary approach to present a logical framework and theoretical foundation for the monetization of time as a digital currency.




Philosophy of Digital Currencies


Book Description

Current systems are failing the poor because these systems are unable to provide the financial inclusion needed for basic subsistence and commerce, which in turn would drive micro- and macro-economic growth. This book introduces the reader to a new way of thinking about how value can be created, captured, measured, and understood, economically and financially, and within the context of social contracts. It underscores the need to revisit such models through technological advancements, namely, Industrial Revolution 4.0, in order to solve pressing global issues such as economic inclusion and poverty eradication. The book proposes that for humanity to make the leap forward and for any real sustainable development to occur, the world needs a disruptive approach to value creation using currency systems, considering that currencies underpin value exchange. This disruption will result in a level of decentralization that facilitates peer-to-peer value exchange and drives financial inclusion, all of which should be underscored by a new, digital social contract. The author asserts that a time-based digital currency could address these issues by creating a new and truly inclusive currency model that allows economies to gain more value than previously possible. In addition, by leveraging 4IR technologies, a currency system can be designed where each unit of money accurately reflects the context and range of socio-economic factors that influence each human interaction. This book is aimed at futurists, technologists, researchers, policymakers, and anyone that is curious about how technology could make a difference in our collective futures. It cuts across a range of subject areas from economics, finance, philosophy, innovation to social development and takes an interdisciplinary approach to present a logical framework and theoretical foundation for the monetization of time as a digital currency.




Digital Cash


Book Description

The fascinating untold story of digital cash and its creators—from experiments in the 1970s to the mania over Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies Bitcoin may appear to be a revolutionary form of digital cash without precedent or prehistory. In fact, it is only the best-known recent experiment in a long line of similar efforts going back to the 1970s. But the story behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and its blockchain technology has largely been untold—until now. In Digital Cash, Finn Brunton reveals how technological utopians and political radicals created experimental money to bring about their visions of the future: to protect privacy, bring down governments, prepare for apocalypse, or launch a civilization of innovation and abundance that would make its creators immortal. Filled with marvelous characters, stories, and ideas, Digital Cash is an engaging and accessible account of the strange origins and remarkable technologies behind today's cryptocurrency explosion.




Blockchain and Crypto Currency


Book Description

This open access book contributes to the creation of a cyber ecosystem supported by blockchain technology in which technology and people can coexist in harmony. Blockchains have shown that trusted records, or ledgers, of permanent data can be stored on the Internet in a decentralized manner. The decentralization of the recording process is expected to significantly economize the cost of transactions. Creating a ledger on data, a blockchain makes it possible to designate the owner of each piece of data, to trade data pieces, and to market them. This book examines the formation of markets for various types of data from the theory of market quality proposed and developed by M. Yano. Blockchains are expected to give data itself the status of a new production factor. Bringing ownership of data to the hands of data producers, blockchains can reduce the possibility of information leakage, enhance the sharing and use of IoT data, and prevent data monopoly and misuse. The industry will have a bright future as soon as better technology is developed and when a healthy infrastructure is created to support the blockchain market.




Cryptocommunism


Book Description

Cryptocurrencies are often associated with right-wing political movements, or even with the alt-right. They are the preserve of libertarians and fans of Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek. With their promotion of anonymity and individualism, there’s no doubt that they seamlessly slot into the prevailing anti-State ideology. But in this book Mark Alizart argues that the significance of cryptocurrencies goes well beyond cryptoanarchism. In so far as they allow us ‘to appropriate collectively the means of monetary production’, to paraphrase Marx, and to replace ‘the government of persons by the administration of things’, as Engels advocated, they form the basis for a political regime that begins to look like a communism which has at last come to fruition – a cryptocommunism.




The Politics of Bitcoin


Book Description

Since its introduction in 2009, Bitcoin has been widely promoted as a digital currency that will revolutionize everything from online commerce to the nation-state. Yet supporters of Bitcoin and its blockchain technology subscribe to a form of cyberlibertarianism that depends to a surprising extent on far-right political thought. The Politics of Bitcoin exposes how much of the economic and political thought on which this cryptocurrency is based emerges from ideas that travel the gamut, from Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises to Federal Reserve conspiracy theorists. Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.




Digital Currencies and Public Law


Book Description

This book supports the deeper engagement of public lawyers in digital currency developments which threaten dramatic changes in the relationship between individuals and government authorities. No contemporary issue is more widely acknowledged and less understood than that of digital currencies. The voice of constitutional scholars, however, is crucially missing from prevailing digital money discourses. Private law scholars are grappling with the legal questions raised by digital currency models in property and contract. Public law scholars, by contrast, have yet to appreciate the significance of the moment. The challenge of understanding the technical dimensions of digital money innovations has obscured the potential constitutional revolution digital currencies represent. This book proceeds from the proposition that ‘money’ is best conceived as a constitutional phenomenon. When seen as such, it becomes clear that changes in the nature of money represent changes in political and constitutional arrangements. Explaining how, and in what ways, those changes will take place is the primary focus of this book. Through an examination of historical episodes where the nature of money has been linked to renewed constitutional settlements, this book distils a core set of principles linking aspects of monetary innovation such as technical control of the money supply to constitutional positions such as executive fiscal accountability. From these principles, a conceptual framework is proposed that translates the specific attributes of digital currency proposals into the language of constitutional dynamics. The book will be of interest to students, academics and practitioners with an interest in the law of digital currencies, constitutional law and politics.




Understanding cryptocurrency fraud


Book Description

This handbook focuses on the key issues that continue to hinder the formal development of cryptocurrencies as a mainstream financial asset. It primarily examines reputationally damaging events, particularly those related to illicit behavior. The goal of the handbook is to determine whether some of these events could be mitigated by improved or at least coordinated international regulation. The handbook will be useful for specialist technical audiences such as legal, accounting and financial practices. It will also be beneficial for upper level masters and research students in economics, law, accounting, taxation, investment and portfolio management.




Philosophy of Blockchain Technology - Ontologies


Book Description

About the necessity and usefulness of developing a philosophy specific to the blockchain technology, emphasizing on the ontological aspects. After an Introduction that highlights the main philosophical directions for this emerging technology, in Blockchain Technology I explain the way the blockchain works, discussing ontological development directions of this technology in Designing and Modeling. The next section is dedicated to the main application of blockchain technology, Bitcoin, with the social implications of this cryptocurrency. There follows a section of Philosophy in which I identify the blockchain technology with the concept of heterotopia developed by Michel Foucault and I interpret it in the light of the notational technology developed by Nelson Goodman as a notational system. In the Ontology section, I present two developmental paths that I consider important: Narrative Ontology, based on the idea of order and structure of history transmitted through Paul Ricoeur's narrative history, and the Enterprise Ontology system based on concepts and models of an enterprise, specific to the semantic web, and which I consider to be the most well developed and which will probably become the formal ontological system, at least in terms of the economic and legal aspects of blockchain technology. In Conclusions I am talking about the future directions of developing the blockchain technology philosophy in general as an explanatory and robust theory from a phenomenologically consistent point of view, which allows testability and ontologies in particular, arguing for the need of a global adoption of an ontological system for develop cross-cutting solutions and to make this technology profitable. CONTENTS: Abstract Introducere Tehnologia blockchain - Proiectare - Modele Bitcoin Filosofia Ontologii - Ontologii narative - Ontologii de intreprindere Concluzii Note Bibliografie DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.24510.33602




Proof of Stake


Book Description

The new book from one of TIME's 2021 most influential people Author was in Forbes 30 Under 30 Hall of Fame "A crucial contribution to development of a new technology that will impact all of our lives.” –Laura Shin, host of the Unchained podcast and author of The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze “Vitalik Buterin is one of the most influential creators of our generation....Like most of his work, it is sure to become a must-read.”–Camila Russo, author of The Infinite Machine, founder of The Defiant The ideas behind Ethereum in the words of its founder, describing a radical vision for more than a digital currency—reinventing organizations, economics, and democracy itself in the age of the internet. When he was only nineteen years old, in late 2013, Vitalik Buterin published a visionary paper outlining the ideas behind what would become Ethereum. He proposed to take what Bitcoin did for currency—replace government and corporate power with power shared among users—and apply it to everyday apps, organizations, and society as a whole. Now, less than a decade later, Ethereum is the second-most-valuable cryptocurrency and serves as the foundation for the weird new world of NFT artworks, virtual real estate in the metaverse, and decentralized autonomous organizations. The essays in Proof of Stake have guided Ethereum’s community of radicals and builders. Here for the first time they are collected from across the internet for new readers. They reveal Buterin as a lively, creative thinker, relentlessly curious and adventuresome in exploring the consequences of his invention. His writing stands in contrast to the hype that so often accompanies crypto in the public imagination. He presents it instead as a fascinating set of social, economic, and political possibilities, opening a window into a conversation that far more of us could be having. Media scholar Nathan Schneider provides introductions and notes.