Writing About Crypto And Blockchain With Author Finn Brunton

With Finn Brunton, Author of Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency

What is your background briefly?

I have an MA from the European Graduate School, and a PhD from the University of Aberdeen. I’m primarily a historian of technology, and I teach in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University.

Does it seem like a logical background to what you do now?

Strangely, yes! I started out working on knots and knotting — a primeval human technology, both for practical purposes and for records, memories, and communication. I’ve been working on technologies as media ever since, from the problem of spam on the internet and the web to theories of rational communication by radio bursts with alien life.

What inspired you to write this book?

My deeper interest has always been in how we think through things, literally — how we reason through technologies, and understand ourselves, our past and future, in terms of particular technologies and techniques. I’ve long wanted to write about money as a kind of information technology, and I’m fascinated by experimental and utopian subcultures and political projects.

Personally I wrote a lot about blockchain, and what it could potentially do, long before I then got asked to advise cryptocurrency / ICO launches – what got you into this space?

More than a decade ago I was investigating early micropayments systems, experiments with digital postage, and the work of David Chaum, and was waiting for the next step in that area. I encountered Bitcoin very early on in its existence, heard these echoes of previous projects, and wanted to understand how it came to be.

Do you think it is such a powerful idea, if so why?

It’s a mix of powerful ideas, many of which have been around for a long time — most importantly irrefutable distributed ledgers, on top of which you can build other things — combined with luck and circumstance: circulating as a project at the nadir of the global financial/credit crisis.

We enjoyed your detours into the cypherpunks, the oddballs and everything else, it helped to provide a wider context for looking at cryptocurrencies, was this your intention? Or just because they were an interesting bunch?

It was very much my intention to bring them to the centre. A lot of counterintuitive things about cryptocurrencies make more sense when we understand the particular social visions and theories of money shared and argued by the people who built the technologies from the start — from seeking financial alternatives to posthumanity!

There seems to be a strong feeling that Satoshi N’ was perhaps 3 or 4 people, what are your thoughts on this?

I have my theory, of course — not a widely shared one, I admit! — but I think it was a solo effort.

Will the early / genises blocks be cashed in / would that destabilise bitcoin?

I doubt that they will be cashed in or enter circulation in any more than small amounts — a big move would require some quick work to avoid major destabilization, just as if, say, Germany or the US decided to liquidate their gold reserves in a hurry.

How can people find out more about you & your work?

You can find links to all my books and other writing over at http://finnb.net.

Anything else you’d like to add / we should have asked?

For readers abroad in California, we will be holding a book launch at the Internet Archive on June 25: You can find the Eventbrite page here. Hope to see you there!

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