Cryptocurrencies: From gold fetishism to hayekgold

Abstract

The dizzying fluctuations in the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, especially since the second half of 2016, have stimulated broad academic and media debates about their nature and prospects in the near future: are they strictly currencies? Do they have the potential to supplant national currencies or even to usurp the world money statute from the dollar? Was it a merely speculative asset? In this article, such questions will be considered in the light of the Marxian critique of political economy, in particular the Marxian analysis of money and its various determinations. In addition to shedding light on the current configuration of money and on some salient features of contemporary capitalism, which amidst successive crises of over-accumulation catapults its financial dimension, it is intended to retake Marx’s critique of money fetishism as a key to understand the existence and dynamics of cryptocurrencies production.