Cryptofinancial imaginaries: how neoliberal theories are materialized in the technical principles of cryptocurrencies

Arturo Castro and Andreu Belsunces

Journal of Cultural Economy, 2025, vol. 18, issue 5, 699-723

Abstract: Cryptocurrencies are sociotechnical objects encoding the visions and interpretative frameworks of the communities of practice that ideated and designed them. This paper explores and presents the notion of cryptofinancial imaginaries, a co-productive process between technocratic and antidemocratic ideologies and cryptocurrency technologies that are presented as natural and liberatory, and whose agenda deepens in neoliberal free-market logics. To do so, we first investigate how neoliberal theories framed the imaginaries of cryptocurrencies’ elite. Second, we explain how these political and economic positions produced a series of technical developments that became the normative basis of contemporary cryptocurrencies. Third, we describe how these technologies reproduce these ideological positions today. To situate the political positions of cryptocurrencies’ original imaginaries we conduct a historical analysis of online discussions and technical documents of Cypherpunks, Crypto-anarchists and Extropians between the 1980s and 2000s. To explain how neoliberal principles are encoded and reproduced by particular technologies, we analyze Bitcoin and Ethereum documentation and we conduct a technical analysis of these two cryptocurrencies’ affordances. Finally, we argue that the popularization cryptofinancial imaginaries would magnify the already existing neoliberal dynamics that increase inequality and advance towards a de-democratizing cultural and material framework of economization of social relations.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17530350.2024.2436869 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jculte:v:18:y:2025:i:5:p:699-723

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJCE20

DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2024.2436869

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Cultural Economy is currently edited by Michael Pryke, Joe Deville, Tony Bennett, Liz McFall and Melinda Cooper

More articles in Journal of Cultural Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().