Farmer, miner, builder, trader : re-humanizing the distributed infrastructures of Bitcoin
This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | eng |
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2020
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123607 |
| _version_ | 1826211253614280704 |
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| author | Wu, Yue,S.M.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. |
| author2 | Lauren Jacobi. |
| author_facet | Lauren Jacobi. Wu, Yue,S.M.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. |
| author_sort | Wu, Yue,S.M.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. |
| collection | MIT |
| description | This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:03:01Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | mit-1721.1/123607 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:03:01Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1236072020-03-24T03:41:48Z Farmer, miner, builder, trader : re-humanizing the distributed infrastructures of Bitcoin Re-humanizing the distributed infrastructures of Bitcoin Wu, Yue,S.M.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lauren Jacobi. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture Architecture. This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2019 Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (pages 136-143). The concept of bitcoin is powerful and charming. Social scientist gurus, transnational corporations' CEOs, and mass media journalists all emphasize that cryptocurrency will lead humanity to a future of increasing extraordinary financial and spatial decentralization. However, although bitcoin has been around for 10 years, existing bitcoin geopolitics have not been significantly addressed. If we try to thoroughly understand bitcoin, it is crucial to ask the following questions: What are bitcoin's dynamic urban landscapes and what ramifications have they brought to us? What will the future of bitcoin's technology offer to us? In this thesis, I challenge the common imagination that cryptocurrency contributes to the creation of public goods by conducting the investigation through four aspects that fall under the umbrella of bitcoin geopolitics, including: algorithm modeling, computational accelerating, global positioning, and human scaling. I argue that bitcoinization is not a process that "literally codes the world we wish to see." It is not a decentralized system; rather, it aligns with the existing geopolitical power concentrations and reflects current geopolitical relations and competition. The thesis reveals a more dynamic bitcoinization process which remains a fundamentally capitalist urban process from the lens of architecture and urbanism. I conclude by exploring a design question: how do designers envision a dystopia fueled by bitcoin, perhaps combatting it, based on the relationship between ourselves, as humans, and bitcoin technology? With this exploration, I develop a more substantial critique of the potential paradoxes raised by bitcoin technology, in order to raise awareness of the politics of cryptocurrency mining, whose underlying desperation and hysteria are concealed by the rhetoric of liberation and decentralization. by Yue Wu. S.M. S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture 2020-01-23T16:59:44Z 2020-01-23T16:59:44Z 2019 2019 Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123607 1135867270 eng MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 143, 3 unnumbered pages application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| spellingShingle | Architecture. Wu, Yue,S.M.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Farmer, miner, builder, trader : re-humanizing the distributed infrastructures of Bitcoin |
| title | Farmer, miner, builder, trader : re-humanizing the distributed infrastructures of Bitcoin |
| title_full | Farmer, miner, builder, trader : re-humanizing the distributed infrastructures of Bitcoin |
| title_fullStr | Farmer, miner, builder, trader : re-humanizing the distributed infrastructures of Bitcoin |
| title_full_unstemmed | Farmer, miner, builder, trader : re-humanizing the distributed infrastructures of Bitcoin |
| title_short | Farmer, miner, builder, trader : re-humanizing the distributed infrastructures of Bitcoin |
| title_sort | farmer miner builder trader re humanizing the distributed infrastructures of bitcoin |
| topic | Architecture. |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123607 |
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