ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the political and cultural context that has enabled the contemporary success of Bitcoin. Beltramini outlines the history of some concepts constructed within the antistatist movement from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, considering how these particular concepts came into being and what use was made of them. He then describes how the collapse of these concepts down into a unique, influential vision of social organization linking anonymity and autonomy in an anti-technocratic stance marks the birth of cryptoanarchism. He debunks the historical narratives of cryptoanarchism that theorists and activists developed by documenting a greater diversity of thinkers and intellectual streams than is typical in the conventional account. Afterwards, Beltramini summarizes the main steps that connected the cryptoanarchism of the 1990s with the development of blockchain, the technology for “distributing” the mechanism of securing trust among users that obviates the intervention of a central authority. Behind Bitcoin lies blockchain, which emerged from the political theory of a digital “commune” in which members communicate, share, and rule using pseudonyms. By tracing the history of cryptoanarchism and treating it as a political philosophy of social organization, Beltramini elucidates the motivations behind the movement that spawned Bitcoin.
