From Bitcoin to Farm Bank: An idiotic inquiry into blockchain speculation

Abstract

Bitcoin’s uptake in Turkey has ranked among the highest in the world. Meanwhile, moral judgment about cryptocurrency has remained unsure about its comparison to other types of investment: what is a scam and what is a legitimate investment? Who is ‘daringly visionary’ and who is merely ‘gullible’ or ‘blinded’ by illusory promise? Displacing decidedly North American stories of Bitcoin’s origins and ‘Web3’ futures, this article considers the local appeal and sociotechnical potential of cryptocurrencies and blockchain-centric innovation. I analyze the open-endedness of such potential as well as its foreclosures. The case of Turkey shows that speculation regarding cryptocurrency not only implies wagering on price developments, but it also entails speculating about the possible, plausible or expectable futures of technological innovation. Blockchain-based innovation has elicited myths of the technological sublime and utopian sentiment, as it promises to usher in disruptive futures hardly imaginable from the vantage point of the present. Referencing Simondon’s philosophy of technology, my main question is: how do speculative technologies and discourses shape the present, along with the futures that emerge from it? Drawing on interviews with speculators in combination with a digital methods analysis of Turkish ‘crypto Twitter’, my answer highlights the asymmetries and inequalities of media ecologies as well as discursive contestations over the boundaries between the possible/impossible, realism/utopianism and common sense/idiocy. Moreover, engaging theories of utopia by Srnicek and Williams, Stengers, and Jameson, I ponder, what would a speculative engagement with seemingly ‘implausible’ or ‘impossible’ futures comprise that deserves not to be dismissed as simply gullible or as blinded by the technological sublime?