Distributed democracies? A sociological analysis of cryptocurrencies and DLTs

This research is a sociological analysis of cryptocurrencies and their underlying Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), also known as blockchain technology. DLTs are proclaimed by supporters to enable disruption and democratisation through replacing trust with algorithms, and intended to offer an alternative to ‘failing’ traditional financial and economic systems. This thesis contributes a balanced, alternative narration of DLTs, where these promises are considered in relation to wider democratic and economic imaginaries. To make sense of what DLTs actually are and can be, this thesis provides a framing focussed on three recurring themes; Trust, Democracy, and Humanism. Utilising these themes and drawing on theories from economic sociology on the social dimensions of money, markets and value, I demonstrate that DLTs find it difficult to accurately address their claims and to constitute an alternative to traditional systems. This is partly because they are founded on the same assumptions about money, markets, and human organisation as the systems already in place, but more fundamentally because any economic arrangement is also a social arrangement, and it is impossible to remove the need for trust. I demonstrate that DLT-based organisations also tend to resemble other technology and finance ventures in practice, being designed to mediate trading and/or extract fees. These developments therefore also fuel an acceleration of speculation through offering new routes to commodification, in turn affecting our wider economies the more they get entangled. Following an ethnographic approach, the fieldwork consisted of semi-structured elite interviews and observations conducted at industry conferences, as well as grey literature analysis. By hearing from people involved with the DLT space, this thesis offers an empirical dimension that is the first of its kind in the discipline. Drawing on both empirical evidence and theoretical framing, the thesis also contributes a typology of four archetypes that embody different motivations, imaginaries and interpretations of cryptocurrencies and DLTs.