Ever since the Romans established a central currency system in the third century BC, money has been controlled by the state as a tool of political power. This control was exerted by manufacturing coins, issuing currencies backed by stored gold and, eventually, through central currency reserves. In each of these phases of monetary history, the state had near universal control over money. As such, the state could tax and regulate its use and fund its own activities.
Bitcoin was imagined by an anonymous computer programmer (or group of programmers—their identity is unknown) known as Satoshi Nakamoto in an attempt to break the tie between the state and money. It was intended to be the lingua franca of the internet—a currency born of, designed for and using the attributes of the World Wide Web.
Beyond being a technological leap from earlier digital currency experiments, bitcoin was also a more defined political project. Early bitcoin enthusiasts and...
Taylor Owen is a professor of digital media and global affairs at the University of British Columbia, a senior fellow at the Columbia Journalism School and author of Disruptive Power: The Crisis of the State in the Digital Age.
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