1 Rahul Kumar James Patriquinn PSCI 4603 2 December 2023 Bitcoin and Contradiction Bitcoin and what its value amounts to is highly contested and approached by both Dodd and Peterson through differing ways. Dodd states there is a paradoxical relationship with mainstream capital leading to frays within its episteme. Peterson however, provides an ontological framework for exploring this underlying contradiction. Through Peterson, a synthesis and depth can be found in exploring the contradiction identified by Dodd and explicitly in exploring how capital constitutes, reconstitutes and ultimatily disciplines bitcoin as value to be exploited. Dodd argues that there exists a contradiction for the value that bitcoin provides, wherein “ if Bitcoin succeeds … as an ideology, it will fail in practical terms as a form of money” (Dodd, 2018). This contradiction is revealed through the ideology that bitcoin posits contrasts with its reality as a value to be exploited. The mythology around bitcoin is premised on being a ‘other’ form the mainstream financial system, Through this ideology of difference, bitcoin and the numerous political and social ideologies that make up its users can be categorized as an entity. However, the aspirations of this group fail as a result of the paradox wherein the ideology underpinning bitcoin is the same “it seeks to deny, namely, the dependence of money upon social relations, and upon trust” (Dodd, 2018). 2 Exploring this dynamic through Peterson reveals the way in which bitcoin is surveilled, conceptualized and then reconstituted and disciplined by mainstream finance as it seeks to morph bitcoin into an exploited product, which enables Dodds contradictions. As the virtual economy relies on the information mode of production, wherein the “exchange of symbols in the form of information, knowledge, or intellectual capital” (Peterson, 2003). This knowledge exchange is premised on the hegemonic consciousness, as represented by the Davos Man by Peterson purports, in their beliefs in “individualism, market economics” (Peterson, 2003). This informs the relationship that capital has towards bitcoin, wherein the ideology that bitcoin proponents want through its decentralization and absence of central authority is clashed with the Baudrillarden hyperreality of which the simulated “ society of hyperreality is incapable of generating meaning and the pursuit of consumption offers only a false liberation (Peterson, 2003). This false liberation for bitcoin is shown as it is “a techno-utopia that … [is embedded in ] a set of social practices that are sustained by strong beliefs” (Peterson, 2003). This social trust that bitcoin implicitly needs is further morphed as capital seeks to reconstitute bitcoin in its own image to further derive value from it. As Peterson states, the information economy morphed finance through its deregulation and securitization of global finance. Dodd recognizes this occurring in bitcoin, as the horizontalism of Bitcoin is contrasted with a “high degree of political hierarchy and social organization” (Dodd, 2018). Bitcoin thus is disciplined and reshaped by traditional finance as the “disciplinary neoliberalism” that Peterson states takes aim at correcting behaviors ill suited to value extrication and incentives behaviors suit it and the Davos Man's interest. 3 The ideology that Bitcoin purports have been locked in a paradox that is driven by capitals needing to derive value from bitcoin, which lessens its ideology as it morphs into ideals and values that are defined by capital and not by its original foundations. Through this, Bitcoin has a false liberation as it transforms itself to suit capital in pursuit of value. 4 Works Cited Dodd, Nigel. “The Social Life of Bitcoin.” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 35, no. 3, 2018, pp. 35–56, https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276417746464. Peterson, V. Spike. A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy : Integrating Reproductive, Productive, and Virtual Economies. Routledge, 2003, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203380826.
