An Ontology of cryptocurrencies – Blockchain as an ownership creating machine
Author(s): Samuli Tikkanen
Wednesday 14 | 15:40-16:00
Room: TP45
Session: Untangling the entangled processes of digitization and privatization
This study delves into the ontology of digital economies, exploring how capitalist ownership logics rooted in material possessions are brought into the digital realm via blockchain technology. The material-based, or classical view of ownership contrasts with the unique ontological space offered by digitality, which in its early stages emphasized the freedom of duplication and sharing of free files.
Sociological analysis of cryptocurrencies often focuses on the money form of cryptocurrencies. This article turns to STS literature and differential ontology to formulate how the lack of restrictions tied to materiality shapes the nature of digital ownership, arguing that cryptocurrencies could be better understood from the perspective of economic ontologies. Blockchain could be seen as an attempt to bring certain qualities of materiality, especially time/space individuation of goods and scarcity, into digital spaces, where goods are often infinitely reproducible without cost. This means that the blockchain itself is a machine that creates individuated goods in a digital space, where goods usually cannot be told apart.
The paper further asks how this shift toward robust, blockchain-based ownership in the digital realm might alter the ownership paradigm associated with digital spaces, bringing it closer to classic views on ownership. Lastly, I speculate whether the discussion on access-based consumption of digital goods is still relevant in the future, considering that blockchain-based solutions create a more material-like form of ownership for digital virtual goods in digital spaces.