Bitcoin enthusiasts worldwide represent the so-called 'centralised governance' of state-regulated markets as oppositional to its emerging 'decentralised' alternative. This imaginary depicts decentralisation as a sweeping moral force that will replace the intricate linear hierarchies of a debt-based 'old' fractional-reserve banking system with an egalitarian network of interconnected nodes in the 'new' crypto-economic order. Yet, since most value transactions at the grassroots level still involve the use of state-printed (fiat) money, enthusiasts experiment with real-life decentralised sociality merely in a handful of offline spaces. They must therefore constantly shift back and forth between their fiat bank account and their cryptocurrency digital wallet. Matan Shapiro argues that as they engage in this border-crossing dynamic – which is ongoing and open ended – enthusiasts shape a spatiotemporal middle-ground between these 'centralised' and 'decentralised' cosmogonic visions. The middle-ground then opens new potentialities for imagination, myth-making and ritual practice for those who choose to dwell in it.

Based on Shapiro's ongoing ethnographic research at the Bitcoin Embassy in Tel Aviv, he will advance the term 'cryptogenesis' to analyse this processual reckoning of alterity 'in the middle' and elaborate on how it may critically inform our understanding of financial edgework, socioeconomic rhythm and monetary liminality in contemporary late capitalism.

About the Speaker

Matan Shapiro (PhD 2013, University College London) holds a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, working as part of Prof. Bruce Kapferer's project  on 'Egalitarianism: Forms, Processes, Comparisons' (2017-19). His current research focuses on the emerging cosmological dimensions of trustless transactions of value among Bitcoin enthusiasts in Tel Aviv.