A Bitcoin’s Worth: Talks of Money and Value at the Advent of Digital Currency

• In Event: 034 - Section on Economic Sociology Paper Session. Money, Credit and Society

Abstract

In the wake of the Great Recession, a monetary object born of a novel combination of cryptography, computation, and anti-centralization politics was introduced to the world: Bitcoin. Since its inception, the valuation of Bitcoin and the other digital currencies that followed it has risen in a meteoric, and often extremely volatile, fashion. With this rise has also come a sustained disruption to some of the most deeply taken-for-granted concepts in modern life, money and value. Using text gathered from 100,000s of messages posted by individuals in the main communities surrounding Bitcoin, this work uses a combination of automated and traditional content analysis to explore the “talks” (Swidler 2001) of money and value that individuals have employed to deal with this upheaval. The resulting analysis traces the manner in which the initial metallist views that first inspired the creation of this form of “digital gold” (Popper 2015) continues to heavily influence these discourses and the way in which members have had to go beyond those founding ideas in order to make sense of the novel monetary project they have undertaken. In exploring these variegated, sometimes contradictory, discussions of the economic, political, and social origins of money and value, this analysis will seek to shed light on the ways the individuals at the advent of digital currency are making sense of this new arena of economic activity and how they might be creatively reworking established notions of money and value to explain what Bitcoin is and where its worth comes from.

Author

• Lynette Shaw, University of Michigan