Thirteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

“There is no such thing as society,” Margaret Thatcher stated. Blockchain reflects the hegemonic power of consent, not persuasion. Blockchains should “entail[s] rejection of an alternative on principle, but an assumption of the impossibility of an alternative.” First, I explore Cryptotoken economies, on game theory and behavioral economics, focusing on network theories of value, i.e. ecosystem-creation with token curated registries. Second, I introduce the legal consumer, “a rational, calculating, and independent entity “whose moral autonomy is measured by [her] capacity for ‘self-care’—the ability to provide for [her] own needs and service [her] own ambitions.” In legal liberalism, the unit of governance has shifted from collective to individual; from a representative democracy to an aggregate one. The Legal Consumer’s morality is “a matter of rational deliberation about costs, benefits, and consequences.” Cryptogovernance is crucial in building and protecting collective identities on the infosphere. Rights-based decision-making and transitional justice is evident in discourses of legal development and human rights. Subsequently, I illustrate cryptogovernance ranging from identity creation, digital rights management, wallet-based encryption and transactional exchanges, while preserving pseudo-anonymous presences on blockchains. Beyond regulating outputs of economic and social resources, cryptogovernance interconnects dynamically with stakeholders: citizens, communities and businesses. Similar to native American tribal identities, on blockchains, each node is an individual custodian holding a public-private key pair pseudo-anonymously on a decentralized ledger. Although the individual custodian holds rights and access to her identity, facts and data, her identity becomes part of the collective’s shared identity.