On Thursday,May 6th at 10 am (CET) we hosted CAS SEE Weekly Seminar with Željko Ivanković (Prague College) on “Cryptocurrencies and value neutrality of technology”.
The idea of author of Bitcoin network Satoshi Nakamoto was to create an electronic payment system without a ‘trusted third party’ which verifies transactions. His endeavour revives the understanding of technology, here embodied in an algorithm, as value neutral, as a pure means to an end. A comparison of essential characteristics of technology of cryptocurrencies with other types of money (metal money, paper money, book money, bank money) uncovers moral values in their technical solutions, besides the ideological arguments of advocates of crypto-money. From the evaluation an institutional nature of money emerges. The analysis of cryptocurrencies is inspired by examples from Sheila Jasanoff’s Ethics of Innovations and relies on a new legal theory of money.
Željko Ivanković (Prague College) is an author, publisher, manager, university lecturer, and former diplomat from Zagreb, Croatia, having significant international experience. Željko was economic counsellor at the Embassy of Croatia in Tokyo and in Canberra. Earlier in his career he was a well known Croatian economic and political journalist. He received his PhD in political philosophy from the Australian National University. Željko has published several books and used to be a research director at the Croatian Banking Association; he was editor in chief of a leading Croatian financial magazine, Banka, and ran a Croatian publishing company SPO ltd (Contemporary Business Communications).
Watch the CAS SEE Weekly Seminar with Željko Ivanković:
