Cryptocurrency is, ultimately, science fiction. That isn’t an insult. It is science fiction in the sense that decades before you could set up a cold wallet, trade crypto, or hodler Bitcoin, the idea that one day there would exist a vast, distributed digital currency as an alternative to fiat money was a fiction, a thing that existed only in the imaginations of a handful of geeks, programmers, and weirdos. And it is science inasmuch as those same people, through generations of trial and error, actually made that fiction reality.

Professor Finn Brunton joins our show to discuss his latest book, Digital Cash, which is about those innovators—anarchists, socialists, libertarians, and everything in between—and the stories that they told, stories powerful enough to fabricate something worth billions of dollars out of nothing and, possibly, permanently transform the future of money for good or for ill.

How is digital data valuable? How do you find ways that can limit the ways that data can circulate? What does ‘passing current’ mean? What role does trust play in the exchange of currency?

Further Reading:

Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency, published by Princeton University Press & written by Finn Burton.

Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency, written by Finn Brunton

Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution, written by Rebecca L. Spang

Related Content:

The Future of Banking, written by Pascal Hügli

What’s in Your (Crypto) Wallet?, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Facebook Friends Libra, Building Tomorrow Podcast

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