Embedded Digital Money

This enlightening book traces Bitcoin's journey from a novel post-2008 crisis experiment to a redefining powerhouse of the financial world. Ilan Talmud reveals the communities, visionaries, investors, regulators and big banks behind this ever-shifting currency, which has come to simultaneously represent digital gold and financial ruin.Talmud uncovers the 'folk economics'-laymen imaginaries and rituals-which have sustained Bitcoin's value beyond pure markets through recessions, time-warped algorithms and patchy regulations. Chapters analyse Bitcoin's unique temporal orders, where algorithms entwine socioeconomic hopes and future imaginations, Bitcoin's regulatory gaps and the architectural role of the state to map the currency as a financial asset. Exposing the socially crafted nature of money in the digital age, the book argues that Bitcoin has not overthrown banks or states, but has been absorbed into their web of power plays, fresh infrastructures and enduring hierarchies.Embedded Digital Money is a vital resource for scholars and students of economics and finance, social policy, sociology and political economy. Cryptocurrency policy analysts and stakeholders will also benefit from its detailed assessment of government fintech regulation.