Cryptocurrencies — once confined to niche chat rooms — have become a perennial news story, making headlines whenever prices rise. This month that was courtesy of Facebook, which announced plans for a new digital currency called Libra.
The faithful often ascribe almost miraculous qualities to digital currencies. John McAfee, the antivirus software creator and fugitive from the law, declared bitcoin bubbles “mathematically impossible” in 2017 (a year later, the price had fallen by three-quarters). The cultish feeling is heightened by the brand of cant surrounding crypto. Talk of HODLing, Lambos and whales can make forums seem like a foreign country. But the most important tenet for true believers is that fiat cash is on the way out. When it goes, those with cryptocurrencies will be the new elite.
Finn Brunton, an assistant professor at New York University, documents the pre-digital roots of that millenarian monetary theory. His main thesis is that money is a cosmogram: “A model of the universe and a plan for how to organise life and society accordingly.” Our current system of money assumes an “ordinary” future. Alternatives don’t just believe in the collapse of money: they fixate on the imminent collapse of society as we know it.