From Work to Proof of Work

Meaning and Value after Blockchain

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2228656
AutoresJeffrey West Kirkwood (autor correspondente)
Ano2022
Volume48
Fascículo2
Páginas360-380
Data de publicação2022-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCritical Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0093-1896 • E-ISSN: 1539-7858
EditoraUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/717303
OpenAlexW4200275265
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas12

The price of Bitcoin is once more soaring. From early October 2020 to early January 2021, the price of a single Bitcoin token went from roughly $10,000 to nearly $65,000, reinspiring the hopes of the crypto-faithful in the inevitability of a future beyond centralized banking and leaving the rest to dread the jargon of computational libertarianism. The speculative betting driving this recent price action, however, belies a more rudimentary and overlooked shift in the digital economy signaled by cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in particular. Unlike an earlier industrial logic that sought to reduce heat loss and improve efficiency to maximize surplus value, Bitcoin's proof-of-work system shifts the basis of value production from efficiency to inefficiency. Moreover, it does so by using a cryptographic algorithm whose purpose is to destroy the meaning of its inputs. Through an exploration of Bitcoin's proof-of-work technics and its inversion of traditional models of value extraction, the text argues that Bitcoin reveals a profound transformation in the nature of surplus represented by computational capitalism

Computer security · Cryptocurrency · Economics · Epistemology · Inefficiency · Law and economics · Meaning (existential · Microeconomics · Neoclassical economics · Proof-of-work system · Security token · Value (mathematics · Work (physics · Blockchain Technology Applications and Security · Computer Science · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism