“The personal is political” was one of the early rallying cries of the Second Wave feminist movement. Decades later, the universal adoption of the internet has led to a new culture around cryptocurrencies with an ethos that could be summarized via similar phrasing: “The personal financial is political.”

After decades of languishing in rightful obscurity, extreme forms of anti-government libertarianism have seen a massive influx of converts by melding crank views about the Federal Reserve and fiat currency with a desire to get rich quick through buying and selling made-up digital tokens like Bitcoin, Ethereum, even joke ones like Dogecoin.

Most people don’t understand how cryptocurrencies work as a technical matter. But they also don’t understand the politics behind cryptocurrencies either. That’s a serious problem because underneath all the hype is a radical anti-government ideology that seeks not just to overthrow government currency but even democracy itself.

Our guest in this episode is David Golumbia, he’s the author of a book “The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism.” He’s also a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University.

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GUEST INFO
David Golumbia's official website:
http://www.uncomputing.org/

The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-wing Extremism
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-politics-of-bitcoin

On Mastodon:
https://mastodon.world/@dgolumbia

On Twitter:
https://twitter.com/dgolumbia

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Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology.

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