Poor miners and empty e-wallets

Latin American experiences with cryptocurrencies in crisis

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12979153
AutoresAndrea Rosales (0000-0001-6797-6241, York University), E Van Roekel (0000-0001-5180-666X, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Peter Howson (0000-0002-3731-2775, Northumbria University, autor de correspondencia), Coco Lisa Kanters (0000-0001-9859-2814, Utrecht University)
Año2023
Volumen17
Número1
Páginas43-54
Fecha de publicación2023-08-15
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaHuman Geography (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1942-7786 • E-ISSN: 2633-674X
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/19427786231193985
OpenAlexW4385875173
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas15
Referencias citadas34

This article examines how cryptocurrencies are increasingly entangled with crises in Latin American political discourse and everyday economic life. In an effort of interdisciplinary integration, combining human geography with political economy and cultural anthropology, we critically assess the linkages between cryptocurrency, economic crisis and forms of political and economic precarity and exploitation. Drawing on experiences in Latin America, mostly on the cases of El Salvador and Venezuela, we explore how cryptocurrencies have rapidly emerged and expanded during periods of economic and political crises. We ground this discussion on social theories of money and critical analysis of blockchain and cryptocurrencies that question the apolitical assumptions of these apparent “trustless” infrastructures. The article contends that cryptocurrencies have the capacity to create potential niches for makeshift economic survival, speculation and quick profit, while at the same time reproducing historical conditions of vulnerability, inequality and ‘crypto-colonialism’. Though cryptocurrencies are surrounded by stories of freedom and decentralised community control, our ethnographic data on El Salvador and Venezuela suggest they often rely on free market fundamentalism and conditions of political corruption by authoritarian state-backed elites

Authoritarianism · Commodity · Cryptocurrency · Democracy · Development economics · Economics · Economy · Latin Americans · Market economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Blockchain Technology Applications and Security · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Law