"African Money in the Heart of Europe" : Bitcoin and Monetary Pluralism within Central-European Economy
Abstract
Bitcoin is a new digital technology of exchange which re-introduces into western societies monetary pluralism. Bitcoin is designed in order to overcome the central control of third parties - such as central banks or national states - over economic exchange and as such it is quite resistant towards state-led institutionalization.
This puts bitcoin into an ambivalent position which plays crucial role in its practical uses; i.e. sometimes it is treated as money, sometimes as commodity; sometimes the prices for goods and services are fixed in fiat currencies, sometimes in bitcoins. Such situation of "monetary anarchism" resonates with monetary practices of west-African popular economies as described by Jane I.
Guyer in "Marginal Gains". Guyer analyses asymmetrical monetary conversions, where statuses of money-objects are being shifted in order to allow gains for one of the exchanging parties.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in two Bitcoin communities in Prague and Bratislava this text argues that bitcoin allows for a similar kind of conversions. Such strategies enable some members of the bitcoin community to deal with volatility of bitcoin's prize while fully embracing its ambiguous character and treat the "monetary anarchism" as a resource of its own.
In conclusion this analysis aims to discuss a process Achille Mbembe calls "Becoming Black of the world" and its relation to inter-linked developments of late capitalism and digitalization, stressing the possibilities of analyzing newly emerging digital economies via popular economic practices from the so-called margins of modernity.