Cryptocurrencies and the promise of individual economic sovereignty in an age of digitalization: A critical appraisal

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies have fuelled an ideological bifurcation between utopian imaginaries of borderless individual economic sovereignty and egalitarianism among libertarian sympathizers since Hayek and more recent dystopian admonitions against financial disruption and inequality by state actors. Providing a state-of-the-art sociological account of this debate, this article conducts the first empirical study on the links between cryptocurrency adoption, individual economic sovereignty and wealth inequality using a novel 2020 cross-societal database of the population-level adoption of the six largest cryptocurrencies. Analyses show that cryptocurrency adoption neither ameliorates nor worsens wealth inequality, but that the geographical expansion of cryptocurrencies is dependent on the very political economic conditions and state permissions that their libertarian enthusiasts spurn. This article concludes by invigorating a programmatic call and agenda for the empirical, sociological study of cryptocurrencies and the methodological designs required to sustain it.