TY  - CHAP
U1  - Konferenzveröffentlichung
A1  - Serada, Alesja
T1  - The Continuous Materiality of Blockchain
T2  - Konferenzband zum Scientific Track der Blockchain Autumn School 2020
N2  - Both cryptocurrency researchers and early adopters of cryptocurrencies agree that they possess a special kind of materiality, based on the laborious productive process of digital ‘mining’ [1]. This idea first appears in the Bitcoin White Paper [2] that encourages Bitcoin adopters to construct and justify its value in metaphoric comparison to gold mining. In
this paper, I explore three material aspects of blockchain: physical infrastructure, human language and computer code. I apply the concept of 'continuous materiality' [3] to show how these three aspects interact in practical implementations of blockchain such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. I start from the concept of ‘digital metallism’ that stands for ‘fundamental value’ of cryptocurrencies, and end with the move of Ethereum to ‘proof-of-stake’, partially as a countermeasure against ‘evil miners’. I conclude that ignoring material aspects of blockchain technology can only further problematize complicated relations between their technical, semiotic and social materiality.
KW  - Ethereum
KW  - Bitcoin
KW  - Materialität
KW  - Wert
KW  - materiality
KW  - value
KW  - technology studies
Y1  - 2020
SN  - 1437-7624
SS  - 1437-7624
U6  - https://doi.org/10.48446/opus-11868
DO  - https://doi.org/10.48446/opus-11868
SP  - 71
EP  - 76
S1  - 6
PB  - Hochschule Mittweida
CY  - Mittweida
ER  -