Papers > By author > Paraná Edemilson

Statements on money draw one of the core distinctions between heterodox and orthodox economists. The last ones stating its neutrality, and the firsts strongly standing against it – arguing on its political and social meanings, beyond its supposedly “neutral” function as a mere mean of exchange. Systemic transformations that have been happened in contemporary societies points out to new roles and forms of money. Within these new forms, Bitcoin, defined as a cryptocurrency, has emerged as one of the most disruptive. Born partly as Austrian economics based “tech utopia” of money without a State, its recent growth was made possible thanks to a particular combination of economic ideas, cognitive and technological developments within broad social and economic changes. Given this, this work aims to review and address the social theory's debates on money, based on the new reality of digital money. Investigating the Political Economy of Bitcoin, and the historic conditions and ideas that made it possible, the paper addresses the nature of money as a social relation from a critical perspective of markets and economic rationality.