Overview

"The cryptocurrency world has transformed in a few short years from a niche subculture to a parallel economic universe, reaching a market capitalization of more than $2.5 trillion in 2021 before plummeting in 2022. For their advocates, cryptocurrencies represent a revolution of world-historical significance. To critics, crypto is more of a speculative tool than a true currency. How do tens of thousands of financial actors make these new monies? What forces give cryptocurrencies their value-or take it away? And what does crypto's spectacular ascent reveal about the nature of money? In this groundbreaking ethnographic analysis of crypto economies and their global markets and communities, Koray Caliskan offers an inside view of how cryptocurrencies are made and traded. He argues that cryptocurrency should be understood as ""data money,"" a historically novel money type, created as the right to send data privately over an accounting infrastructure called blockchain. Drawing on two years of fieldwork among global cryptocurrency communities and in crypto markets, Caliskan makes visible the production principles of cryptocurrencies and explores how crypto exchanges work from within. He explains why and how we have been misunderstanding, underregulating, and improperly taxing crypto exchanges and actors. He also proposes a radically new way to make sense of new finance and its actors. An invaluable book for all readers seeking to understand cryptocurrency, Data Money sheds new light on a profound transformation of finance and its possible future trajectories."

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9780231209595

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Data Money is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the new world of cryptocurrencies. Caliskan has a genuine insider's understanding of that world, and writes about it with verve and insight. His book is a vitally important contribution by one of the most exciting scholars in the new generation of economic sociologists. -- Donald MacKenzie, author of <i>Trading at the Speed of Light: How Ultrafast Algorithms Are Transforming Financial Markets</i> With impressive clarity—drawing from striking interviews, field work, and big data analysis—Data Money develops a pioneering analysis of cryptocurrencies, while transcending disciplinary boundaries and setting a new agenda for future research. Thank you, Koray Caliskan, for helping us make sense of the social world of money in the twenty-first century! -- Viviana A. Zelizer, author of <i>The Social Meaning of Money and Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy</i>

Data Money is essential reading for anyone wants to understand the new world of cryptocurrencies. Caliskan has a genuine insider's understanding of that world, and writes about it with verve and insight. His new book is a vitally important important contribution by one of the most exciting scholars in the new generation of economic sociologists. -- Donald MacKenzie, author of <i>Trading at the Speed of Light: How Ultrafast Algorithms Are Transforming Financial Markets</i>

Author Information

Koray Caliskan is associate professor of strategic design and management at Parsons School of Design, the New School. He is the author of Market Threads: How Cotton Farmers and Traders Create a Global Commodity (2010). Caliskan’s research on which this book was based was selected as a winner of the Breakthrough of the Year 2021 in Social Sciences and Humanities by the Falling Walls Foundation.

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