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Envisioning Blockchain Futures

Title: Blockchain Futures: With or Without Bitcoin?1

Beth Kewell, University of Surrey, Surrey, UK.Peter Ward, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.

Explores perceptions of blockchain futures, provided by an informant to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Blockchain technology is considered, in some quarters, to have outgrown its primary association with the Bitcoin payments ecosystem. This belief has fostered numerous predictions of blockchain futures in which the Bitcoin ecosystem is largely absent. It is nevertheless wholly possible to imagine a future for blockchain in which Bitcoin plays a presiding role.

In drawing attention to subtexts of this kind, the paper argues that expectations of the future can prove highly persuasive within the context of technology selection and adoption processes of the present, lending an invisible hand to the design of business models, while also guiding strategic choices and the purchasing decisions made by managers.

Promise is implicated in the majority of decisions and transactions that businesses engage

with, including those related to state-of-the-art technology and incipient rationales for their

acquisition (Borup et al., 2006). These decisions are frequently contemplated as part of a

strategy for business model development and organisational and ecosystem renewal, within

which technology procurement plays a central role. These new acquisitions are loaded

down with demonstrative expectations, long before they have begun to cross ecosystem

thresholds (Borup et al., 2006), becoming focal points for hope, optimism, and fulfillment

(Pollock et al., 2007; Hyysalo, 2009; Edwards et al., 2009; Pollock and Williams, 2010).

While Bitcoin is, in effect, the first public working prototype of blockchain cryptography

(Nakamoto, 2008; Lemieux, 2013; Godsiff, 2015) many future-orientated narratives

1 JEL Codes: O31 ;O32; O39; D20; D22.Acknowledgements: We would like to thank our anonymous informant for agreeing to take part in

this research project. The interpretation provided is soley that of the authors.

Envisaging Blockchain Futures

(Reijers and Coeckelbergh, 2015), commentaries, and use-cases focus on the development

of privately run versions of the same technology (entitled Distributed Ledgers).

Opinion is therefore currently divided between future forecasts for blockchain, in which

Bitcoin – as a public utility - is either relegated to the status of a “fringe enterprise” (Saks-

McLeod 2016, p.3) or regarded as a useful experiment that is being overtaken by rival

privately run blokchain projects and alternative cryptocurrency-based systems, including

Ethereum (Kristian, 2016; Gardner, 2017; Pymnts, 2017; Rizzo, 2017). Commentators who

foresee the relegation of Bitcoin frequently do so on the basis that the experts and expertise

behind will be naturally absorbed by these private DLT projects (Prisco, 2016; Uhr, 2016:

Scott, 2017).

These competing projections – of relegation, redundancy and absorption - take the form of

articles and ‘use-cases’ that are mostly postulated via business newswire reports and

related blog entries from the financial sector, wherein, they envision an ostensibly hopeful

and positive account of the future in which blockchains free-up clogged information

systems, while also purging counterfeit goods from supply chains, revolutionizing

payments, and subverting Internet cyber crime (Surowiecki, 2011; Turpin, 2014; Bateman,

2015; Tsukerman, 2015; Welch, 2015; Fanning and Centers, 2016; Heires, 2016; McWaters,

et al., 2016; Taft, 2016; Walport, 2016).

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Assumptions about blockchain futures are thereby taking shape at a time of ebullient

interest in the blockchain, which could be figuratively situtated at the base of the “Gartner

consultancy’s hype cycle” (Borup et al., 2006: 291). Blockchain solutions could thereby

feature prominently on organisational shopping lists of the future, representing an essential

prerequisite that ensures AI, 5G and IoT capabilities function cooperatively within a

reinvented IT stack (Camrass and Nelson, 2016). Working out which systems and solutions

to buy, and which expectations to trust, has become remarkably complicated in an

information-saturated Digital Era, typified by the proliferation of ‘4G’ technologies,

platforms and ‘apps’ (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014; Gawer, 2016; Evans and Gawer,

2016). The arrival of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and ‘5G’

mobile communications technology, could intensify these complications still further,

inducing a bewildering array of choices for managers and business owners to negotiate as

they attempt to risk-assess the strategic purchasing of core enterprise systems.

Future company buying decisions could be equally influenced by present-day arguments in

favour of blockchain adoption, which tend to cast this dynamic innovation as an ‘invisible

hand,’ that will deftly remodel organisational inefficiencies, perpetuating seamless supply

chains, smooth-running cities, intelligent manufacturing plants, faultless identity registers,

and crime resistant financial systems (Surowiecki, 2011; Doguet, 2013; Ali, et al., 2014;

Smith and Weismann, 2014; Turpin, 2014; Bateman, 2015; Tsukerman, 2015; Welch, 2015;

Brennan and Lunn,2016; Fanning and Centers, 2016; McWaters, et al., 2016; Taft, 2016;

Walport, 2016).

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Working out which systems and solutions to buy, and which expectations to trust, could

thereby become remarkably complicated in an information-saturated future, typified by the

proliferation of ascedant innovations in blockchain technologies, Artificial Intelligence

(AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and ‘5G’ that either run alongside or replace current ‘4G’

technologies, platforms and ‘apps’ (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014; Gawer, 2016; Evans

and Gawer, 2016).

The remainder of this paper considers how the future of blockchain is seen from the

standpoint of a Bitcoin activist, who can lay claim to first-hand knowledge of the

ecosystem that has demonstrated blockchain’s potential most effectively to date; and thus,

the reasons for its ongoing success as an alternative finance (‘alt-fintech’) nexus (see also:

Doguet, 2013; Maurer, et al., 2013; Turpin, 2014; Angel and McCabe, 2015; Fox-Brewster,

2015; Godsiff, 2015). Our thematic analysis of this stand-alone interview data suggests that

alternative visions of blockchain futures, in which Bitcoin avoids relegation to the sidelines

of history. In so doing, our interviewee evinces a thought-provoking glimpse of blockchain

futures that position Bitcoin at centre stage.

Having touched upon some important methodological considerations relating to stand-alone

interviews, we then reflect on the aspects of our interview concerning expectations of the

future, highlighting specific comments and observations of a promissory nature. The

insights gained suggest that blockchain futures are being written at the present time, in

accordance with two sets of potentially conflicting expectations. The first of these

projections is extended by a grey literature that principally imagines a future economic

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landscape in which disruption leads to an inevitable loosening of ties between blockchain

and Bitcoin, while the second inscription views this relationship as being fundamentally

strengthened by the ‘gales of creative destruction’ (Zuberi and Levin, 2016) currently

moving across the financial terrain.

Further to this, our informant predicts a future in which large-scale financial institutions,

currently seeking to ‘hive-off’ blockchain technology for corporate use, may find it

necessary to utilize Bitcoin’s existing infrastructure as the ‘rails’ upon which DLT projects

will run. Such prognoses envision a future in which the high costs of building bespoke rails

can be more efficiently mitigated via collaboration with an existing (public) Bitcoin

community of cryptologists, software engineers, and programmers, and the blockchain

infrastructure they maintain in order to facilitate a virtual marketplace which is free of

intermediaries (Surowiecki, 2011; Doguet, 2013; Maurer, et al., 2013; Ali, et al., 2014;

Turpin, 2014; Angel and McCabe, 2015; Godsiff, 2015; Welch, 2015; Walport M, 2016.

The future is, in this instance, framed as a scenario in which the Bitcoin community may

come to be reinforced rather than depleted or absorbed by disruptive change.

The insights gained suggest that blockchain futures are being written at the present time, in

accordance with two sets of potentially conflicting expectations. The first of these

projections is proffered by a grey literature that principally imagines a future economic

landscape in which disruption leads to the inevitable estrangement of ties between

blockchain and Bitcoin, while the second inscription views this relationship as being

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fundamentally strengthened by the ‘gales of creative destruction’ (Zuberi and Levin, 2016)

currently moving across the financial terrain.

The interview we analyze in the paper is therefore singular and important, given that it

expedites a counterpoint to the prevailing interpretation of Bitcoin’s future, by reimagining

this ecosystem as a thriving arterial nexus, energizing blockchain projects into a far distant

future.

Expectation, Promise and Talk About Technology

Expectations and the trust dynamics to which they relate, are ubiquitous within discourse

(Brown and Michael, 2003; Webster, 2005; Borup et al., 2006). Expectations form because

information about a given subject, artefact, place or circumstance is either incomplete,

uncertain or considered unreliable (Brown and Michael, 2003; Webster, 2005; Borup, et al.,

2006). Different types of expectation may be contemplated, depending upon the level of

optimism and pessimism that is invested in a given informant’s summation of potential

(Brown et al., 2006; Tutton, 2011).

Expectations primarily evaluate the likelihood that a scenario, person, or object will

demonstrate consistency and continuity with past behaviours and circumstances (Brown

and Michael, 2003; Webster, 2005; Borup et al., 2006; Tutton, 2011; Tutton, 2012; Hultman

and Nordlund, 2013). Critically, negative expectations are symptomatic of distrust and

ambivalence, while positive expectations signal confidence, tenacity, common purpose and

assurance (Ober et al., 1999; Tutton, 2011; van Lente, 2012). Hope materialises in

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situations of marked uncertainty, where the yearning for positive outcomes keeps

participants motivated, despite difficult odds (Tutton, 2011). Hope is, for this reason, at

times regarded as an emotional antidote to fear and pessimism (Brown and Michael, 2003;

Hedgecoe and Martin, 2003; Brown et al., 2006; Martin et al., 2008; Pickersgill, 2013).

Diverse categories of expectation overlap and intersect in speech and text, such that we

may be positive or hopeful and excited in one turn of phrase about an uncertain event and

negative and fearful in the next about a fact considered reliable (Ober et al., 1999).

Promissory discourse of this kind augments reputation effects that, in turn, amplify and

exaggerate the benefits to be derived from a given technology or scientific advance,

sometimes creating equally disproportionate fears of their dystopian consequences (Tutton,

2011 also: Dodd, 2012).

Crucially, the tone adopted within promissory discourse can set expectations for decades to

come, skewing paradigm development while also influencing investment decisions, policy-

making and public perception, beyond laboratory walls, setting in motion “path dependent

processes” that resist diversion (Borup et al., 2006: 286; van Lente, 2012). The results are

solutions designed for problems that we may have yet to appreciate in sufficient depth or

scope (Borup et al., 2006; Brown and Michael, 2003; Ankiewicz and de Swardt, 2006;

Tutton, 2011 and 2012; Scharff and Dusek, 2014).

Blockchain technology is the subject of promissory discourse that accomodates these facets

of expectation – from fear and trepidation to eagerness and excitement. Bitcoin is at the

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centre of this discussion. For some, the Bitcoin ecosystem already represents a redudant

phase in a history of paradigmatic expansion for blockchain that has yet to be

comprehensively written. For others, including our informant, Bitcoin and blockchain

futures remain inextricably linked.

Current Intrepretations of Bitcoin’s Past, Present and Future

Since its establishment in 2008-2009, the Bitcoin community has come to be regarded as a

thriving virtual enclave, populated by a countercultural movement of cryptocurrency

modellers, programmers, system architects, miners, traders and investors (Maurer, et al.,

2013; Doguet, 2013; Lemieux, 2013; Ali, et al., 2014; Parthemer and Klein, 2014; Turpin,

2014; Angel and McCabe, 2015; Fox-Brewster, 2015; Godsiff, 2015; Tsukerman, 2015;

Welch, 2015). This faceless army of engineers and designers are said to have quietly

masterminded an economic revolution from the backwaters of the internet, recalibrating the

financial system from the ground up by creating new forms of virtual money, and new

patterns of transacting, which major financial players can no longer regard as peripheral,

experimental or frivolous (see most recently: Fanning, 2016; Godsiff, 2015; Hern, 2016;

Plansky, et al., 2016; Walport, 2016).

Current myths, legends and cause celebre place Bitcoin at the centre of a rebellious nexus,

consisting of disillusioned financiers, maverick investors, and neo-libertarians, united by

losses made during the financial crisis of 2007-2008 (Maurer, et al., 2013; Doguet, 2013;

Ali, et al., 2014; Parthemer and Klein, 2014; Turpin, 2014; Angel and McCabe, 2015; Fox-

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Brewster, 2015; Godsiff, 2015; Tsukerman, 2015; Welch, 2015; Brennan and Lunn, 2016;

Kristian, 2016).

While the Bitcoin community is embedded in munificent folklore about its unconventional

origins and history of wild speculation (Kristian, 2016) the electronic payment system at

the heart of this ecosystem possesses a solid reputation for speed and reliability that large

scale financial institutions are currently seeking to emulate via the introduction of DLTs

(see by way of example: Bateman, 2015; McWaters et al., 2016; Zuberi and Levin, 2016;

Walport 2016). In so doing, they are seeking to isomorphically replicate the computational

infrastructure of Bitcoin (known as blockchain), based on the assumption that the key

ingredients of its success are entirely technological.

This iteration of blockchain futures ostensibly regards Bitcoin as a technical project which

is now moving on to a new phase of development best overseen by corporate entities and

governments. Resultant commentaries and use cases emanating from the literature thereby

tend to favour ‘under-socialised’ conceptions of what makes blockchain a powerful success

story (Granovetter, 1985). Under-socialised use cases also foster visions of blockchain

futures in which the Bitcoin community and its primary culture, are serendipitously

divorced from the technicity and technology made possible by their efforts, in a process

that amounts to labour alienation in cyberspace (Dodd, 2012; Kristian, 2016). It appears

taken for granted that the most adept and entrepreneurial Bitcoin programmers,

cryptographers, and traders, will identify roles for themselves in the Brave New World of

corporate DLT entrepreneurship (Surowiecki, 2011; Doguet, 2013; Ali, et al., 2014; Smith

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and Weismann, 2014; Turpin, 2014; Fanning and Centers, 2016; Tsukerman, 2015; Welch,

2015; McWaters, et al., 2016; Taft, 2016; Walport, 2016).

This framing of expectations can perhaps be seen as fine-tuned for consumption on the

behalf of specific target audiences in the private sector (Webster, 2005; Borup, et al., 2006;

Pollock, et al., 2007; Pollock and Williams, 2010; van Lente, 2012). At present, this

includes but is not limited to, stakeholders for whom blockchain could significantly alter

their mental map of the future, by, for example, providing investors and stockholders with

hitherto unforeseen blockchain start-up opportunities (see most recently: Kristian, 2016;

Prisco, 2016; Uhr, 2016; Gardner, 2017; Pymnts, 2017; Rizzo, 2017 Scott, 2017). This

potential is also likely to be recognised by ‘first adopters,’ that is to say, entrepreneurs and

business managers who are engaged in ‘horizon-scanning’ for reliable information

regarding blockchain and its potential to transform business models, structures, processes

and professional archetypes (Plansky et al., 2016).

The next section of the paper explores an alternative conception of what may transpire, in

which Bitcoin and its founder community remain at centre stage. Unlike mainstream

reports, commentaries and use cases, this account does not sever DLTs from Bitcoin’s

origins as an alternative finance culture.

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Methodology

The interview we analyse was conducted with a prominent Bitcoin insider, in March 2016,

over the course of three hours. Although circumscribed to a single informant, whose

opinions may not be wholly representative of those held within the Bitcoin community at

large (Bou-Llusar, et al., 2016), the dialogue in question proffers an interpretation of the

future that runs counter to received view mooted by some writers of grey literature

blockchain commentaries and use-cases. It is crucial for analysts to fully consider the

implications of this alternative framing so that more than one set of policy options may be

considered within use cases and policy dialogues (see especially: Webster, 2005; van Lente,

2012).

Our thematic interpretation of this interview concentrates on the futures imagined within

the scope of an informed debate and expert dialogue concerning the efficacy and

sustainability of the Bitcoin ecosystem (Huff et al., 2006). What is the next chapter in

Bitcoin and blockchain stories, as seen by our interview respondent? What are Bitcoin’s

prospects? How will the Bitcoin community’s legacy be carried forward? What values will

be upheld as time passes? In raising these questions, our interview with a Bitcoin insider

draws attention to both the presence in the business discourse of competing visions for

blockchain and, on a broader scale, the inscripting of generative expectations for

blockchain that will go on to frame enterprise strategy and managers’ adoption decisions.

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Blockchain Futures Imagined with Bitcoin

Blockchain cryptography emerges from the interview as a technical accomplishment borne

of social innovations supporting new types of monetary exchange (see for example Dodd,

2012; Maurer et al., 2013; Angel and McCabe, 2015; Reijers and Coeckelbergh, 2015;

Kristian 2016) that aim to eliminate the need for costly and prohibitive intermediation by

governments, banks and clearing houses (Doguet, 2013; Ali, et al., 2014; Turpin, 2014;

Smith and Weismann, 2014; Welch, 2015; Brennan and Lunn, 2016; Fanning and Centers,

2016; Walport, 2016). Participants in the Bitcoin ecosystem are said to be united by this

stance of anti-intermediation, even if their reasons for being allied to this cause are at

philosophical odds, as in the oft-cited example of Libertarian versus Socialist rationales for

assembling cryptocurrency networks (Dodd, 2012; Lemieux, 2013; Ali et al., 2014;

Godsiff, 2015). Our informant avers that it will be necessary for any future iteration of

blockchain technology to retain both the ‘rails’ of Bitcoin (as the technical infrastructure

upon which it has been successfully tested) and the community fabric that made these

advances plausible, during blockchain’s countercultural phase (Surowiecki, 2011; Doguet,

2013; Lemieux, 2013; Maurer, et al., 2013; Turpin, 2014; Fox-Brewster, 2015).

Future-focused aspects of the interview began to emerge via discussion of the current state-

of-affairs within Bitcoin, as an ecosystem of 10 million registered users (Jackson, 2016),

experiencing steady growth in usage and transaction volumes (Scott, 2017). Despite the

possibility of encroachment from the Big Banks, our respondent intimated that Bitcoin

retains significant potential advantages in certain areas, for example not storing personal

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financial data online, higher speed and lower cost of transactions compared to some credit

cards and bank processes, freedom from interference by banks.

However, there are disadvantages too, for example having to transfer to and from another

currency to obtain and then spend the Bitcoin. Some larger companies are accepting Bitcoin

online such as Microsoft, Dell, and Expedia, but an article on Time Inc’s “Money” website

published in January 2015 (Davidson, 2015) highlights that such companies are using

intermediaries and then taking payment in US Dollars, not taking and retaining Bitcoin

themselves. Until traditional retailers accept Bitcoin, the compatibility issue may remain a

significant barrier to diffusion.

In addition, since few companies accept payment in Bitcoins the opportunities to use it are

also limited. Potential adopters can therefore only hear about it second-hand, either from

other users or the media. However, if those messages become positive, then the lack of

trialability may reduce as an issue. Our respondent described how Bitcoin is used to move

money from one country to another, so avoiding bank charges for currency exchange. The

main risk of adopting Bitcoin which is the risk of buying Bitcoins is that its value is

unstable. By definition, there is no bank underwriting the value of the currency. It is

therefore like investing in a commodity such as gold or coffee, or in a company’s shares. As

noted elsewhere in this special issue, Bitcoin is potentially significantly disruptive. Our

respondent commented that it could change the way the world’s finances work and make

governments more accountable.

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Would such a scenario be possible, and if so what would it look like? The fact that Bitcoin

can be presented as such a major disruption may work against it for mass diffusion. On the

other hand, with the dissatisfaction shown in recent politics, it may be that some would

view this as positive. Potentially Bitcoin could support micropayments, thus making it

easier to collect royalties for everything from website access to music downloads (Walport

M, 2016; O’Dair et al. 2016). Overall, it is reasonable to suggest that Bitcoin as an

innovation has a lot of positive attributes but retains some significant risks and issues. The

lack of acceptance by retailers and perceived risk nonetheless appear to be the two most

important negative factors.

The interview to which we refer took place against this backdrop. When prompted to

consider what the UK government need to do to support the development of Bitcoin,

Quotation 1 juxtaposes the present, and the future can be seen in the imagining of London

as a thriving Fintech colony:

Quotation 1

Respondent: “So I think that the UK government stance is one of the best in the world and in fact lots of Bitcoin businesses are relocating to London… The problem is banking in the UK; that’s the real issue… banks in the UK are very anti-Bitcoin although the government is very pro-Bitcoin, and that creates this funny dynamic. But London is the best city in the world for fintech because we’ve got finance and IT on top of each other. In America, Wall St and Silicon Valley are 3000 miles away. In London, everything’s on top. Old St is right next to the financial district. Tech roundabout. So London is a really good place for this and I think the UK government’s done a really good job of waiting and seeing how it develops before they regulate. And in the short term that might make it a bit harder for people to buy Bitcoin but in the long term I think it’s going to produce a better set of guidance.”

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When considering the international dimensions to this situation, our respondent combined

observations of a thriving present with a bustling future in which intellectual and economic

capitals are transplanted to Bitcoin-friendly locations:

Quotation 2

Respondent: “Ultimately I think it will come from government regulators – what happens with it. But I think what will happen is that certain countries like China or Russia, the more closed-off ones, will ban it and bring out their own coin, but there’ll still be demand for Bitcoin and business will move elsewhere. The amount of people that are currently employed in China in the Bitcoin industry is massive: two biggest exchanges, most of the mining. If they banned that and it went overseas what happens to all those people? They get spread out into the countries that still have it as legal and operating. So the more countries that ban it, the countries that don’t ban it have more incentive to embrace it because it’s bringing more jobs and more industry. And some very very clever people from big banks and Paypal and these kinds of financial places are quitting their jobs and joining Bitcoin companies so there’s very much a brain gain – and that means tax and revenue – and so if more and more countries start to ban it, it just creates more incentive to those countries that haven’t banned it to keep operating with it.”

In this next quotation, Bitcoin cedes a new financial paradigm, which benefits consumers

and investors by availing far more stable and secure forms of transacting:

Quotation 3

Respondent: “…. I really do see a future where you have Bitcoin as some kind of e-gold2 and lots of currencies are backed. There’ll be Britcoin, there’ll be Fedcoin, there’ll be Eurocoin, and all these coins will be private blockchains running on top of the Bitcoin blockchain backed by Bitcoin. I see that as a realistic scenario. The same way that currencies used to be backed by gold. They’re now not, but up until the 60s they were. Since we have moved from the gold standard there has been extreme inflation of the money supply and governments and individuals have grown unsustainable levels of debt. Retirement funds have no choice but to gamble on the stock market – many retirement funds have stated they will be bankrupt within a decade without government intervention which means even more debt exacerbating the problem further. Asset prices in every category: property, equities, bonds, land, student loans, etc, are all overinflated and due a massive correction.”

2 Ole Berg, has recently commented on the relevance of the gold standard in relation to Bitcoin. See: Berg, O. 2016. How is Bitcoin money? Theory, Culture and Society, 33(1): 53-72.

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In the next quote, our informant describes Bitcoin as a push technology infrastructure that

is already in a good position to support a future the Internet of Things (IoT):

Quotation 4

Respondent: “Yes. At some point there will be this tipping point where there are enough retailers have it and offer discounts that consumers will bother to use it… Can you imagine if your fridge has run out of milk and automatically orders it from Tesco and has it delivered autonomously. Your fridge can’t have a bank account. You don’t really want to give your bank account access to your fridge. This is another advantage of being a push system not a pull system. If you were going to let your fridge, or Bosch, the ability to buy stuff with your bank card, you have to let them store your bank card information which is a huge risk. If every device in your house had your card information, if they got hacked... So the fact that Bitcoin is a push system not a pull system is massive because it means you don’t have to store this private financial information everywhere.”

The extent of this ‘technoscientific imagining’ (Marcus, 1995; Reijers and Coeckelbergh,

2016) also extends to micropayments and Smart Contracts:

Quotation 5

Respondent: “Micropayments are a very very big use of Bitcoin. They haven’t really developed yet, but… a lot of this stuff is the chicken and the egg. Once there’s critical mass, using Bitcoin all these kinds of things will be incentivised. Content creators will want to accept micropayments because there’s enough people who’ll give it to them. But right now the ecosystem is still developing, it’s very small… So there’s a big debate going on, is Bitcoin going to be used to buy a cup of coffee and all transactions like that are on the blockchain, or is it going to be used by massive banks doing big transactions between each other because they’ll be the only ones able to afford to pay for the transactions… So a lot of people see Bitcoin as being a settlement layer between private blockchains or sidechains… I think that ultimately they’re going to have these trusted systems on top of a trustless system because you can’t have it the other way round. And I think Bitcoin could be that financial backbone that all the central banks have their private blockchains running on top of that they can transfer between when they need to.”

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In this next Quotation, the future is imagined as a space in which circumstance may compel

financial institutions to collaborate with Bitcoin’s open source community, even if this

partnership is borne of initial reluctance:

Quotation 6

Interviewer: “So you effectively have an exchange rate for your currency into Bitcoin, and it becomes the ‘enterprise service bus’ for the financial markets?”

Interviewer: “Yes, I truly see that. And a lot of people see that as a possibility… What banks are thinking is that they could have some kind of settlement layer coin that handles that kind of movement around, but I think that ultimately that’s going to have to be on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, but they of course want that to be made by them so they can determine the aspects of it, charge high fees and not rely on something made by open source programmers somewhere else… And that makes perfect sense because of course, they want to determine that stuff. That’s why I think that ultimately [it] is going to be a closed system. But whether or not that can operate on its own, that is a private blockchain, or on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, is yet to be proven, I think.”

The subject of Bitcoin’s far future sustainability is subsequently revisited within the

following comment on cryptography:

Quotation 7

Interviewer: “What would need to happen for it to fail, do you think?”

Respondent: “I suppose the encryption behind it could be broken. The SHA256. But that same encryption guards the US nuclear missiles, so I think if that was broken Bitcoin would be the least of our worries. This encryption is very very strong. It’s the equivalent of PQP. So it’s practically unhackable currently. But this encryption can also be changed if it was becoming more likely. So in 100 or 1000 years’ time or whatever, they could hard fork it to a more secure encryption. So that’s not too much of an issue. People losing faith in it could make it fail. It only has value because enough people think it has. So if some better cryptocurrency came around that people moved all their money into, let’s just say all the big banks and governments got together and developed something called “earthcoin” and everyone was like, “Ok this is going to be the planetary monetary system” so everyone tries to buy that early. So maybe a competing currency. Or maybe if the core development

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team was heavily infiltrated by people who deliberately want to cause trouble, that could also be another issue.”

Interpretation and Conclusions

As this last comment indicates, the future of blockchain cryptography is becoming a matter

of both cautious and intensely vivid speculation, about, for example, the possibility of a

universal currency (earthcoin) configured via a universal cryptocurrency ecosystem. The

quotations illustrated above demonstrate how it is possible for one speaker to tack-back-

and-forth between this range of moderate and ambitious predictions, in the space of an

exploratory dialogue – as is the case in Quotation 1, wherein the future prospects for

London’s nascent blockchain development community are considered.

An illustration of Bitcoin’s propensity for survival is averred in Quotation 2, concerning the

Bitcoin talent pool and Quotation 3, about the propsects of linking Bitcoin to a new ‘gold

standard’ for the twenty-first century. Quotation 4 and Quotation 5 respectively envision a

future state in which the Bitcoin ecosystem is repositioned as an intermediary between the

IoT and the banking system and public and private payment blockchains (Zhang and Wen,

2016). Quotation 6 offers a compelling insight into the commercial politics of blockchain at

the present time. These observations are paired with future-orientated pessimism, and

scepticism about the long-term sustainability of private blockchains configured out with of

Bitcoin. The relationship between the present and future challenges of securitizing Bitcoin

are examined in Quotation 7, within a scenario that on the one hand, pictures the gradual

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erosion of Bitcoin’s current safeguards over time and the emergence of a post-Bitcoin

global super-currency, on the other.

Conflicting visions of blockchain futures can be seen as fundamentally driven by

disagreements about what blockchain should be in the present and the extent to which it can

be conceived of as private or public intellectual property. Rival notions of blockchain

futures will jostle for attention as economy and society negotiates the Gartner hype curve

(Borup et al., 2006).

Research Limitations

As a means of understanding these contending visions, this paper has operationalised an

emergent area of academic scholarship that explores the links between expectation,

promise, and technology adoption (see especially: Borwn and Michael, 2003; Webster,

2005; Borup, et al., 2006; Pollock, et al., 2007; Pollock and Williams, 2010; van Lente,

2012). The paper demonstrates that this know area can be usefully applied to stand alone

interview material, to identify and faciliate a discussion of alteratives ways of imaging the

future.

Though solely representative of a single individual’s viewpoint, which we recognise as a

research limitation (Ernst and Teichert, 1998), our informant’s perspective does,

nonetheless, deserves singular consideration because it runs against the current tide of

predictions – by imagining a future in which the ties between Bitcoin and blockchain are

not irrevocably torn, and continued economic success depends on the two remaining

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closely tethered. This narrative of continuity represents a challenge to the received view (of

creative disruption leading to Bitcoin’s eventual redundancy), postulated by an expert

commentator and credible observer of the Bitcoin ecosystem (Kumar et al., 1993).

The interview we have conducted raises some important considerations, regarding

subjective perceptions of blockchain futures, which could be further investigated as part of

a multi-participant interview study (Bou-Llusar, et al., 2016). An inquiry of this kind could

seek, for instance, to establish the broader cogency of the views expressed by our informant

among stakeholders in Bitcoin and altcoins. Such an intervention is also likely to bring as

yet undocumented imaginings of the future to the fore, perhaps involving the rise to

prominence of other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum or the realisation of as yet

unspecified innovations that will make blockchain ‘a thing of the past.’

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Bibliographic Notes

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Beth Kewell is a Research Fellow at Surrey University Business School’s Centre for the Digital Economy (CoDE), where she specialises in interpretative research, positioned at the boundary between innovation management, Science and Technology Studies (STS), and risk analysis.

Correspondence to: Beth Kewell, Surrey Centre for the Digital Economy, University of Surrey, Surrey GU2 7XH, UK.

Email:[email protected]

Peter is researching adherence as a theoretical construct. Before commencing his PhD he spent 30 years with an international IT company in roles including Technical Sales Executive for MEA. He has delivered several projects in sub-Saharan Africa and has a passion to contribute to the continent. He is a Fellow of the IET and BCS, is a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered IT Professional. Other activities include life coaching and board-level recruitment.

Correspondence to: Peter Michael Ward PhD researcher, IIPSI floor 3, WMG, University of Warwick

Email: [email protected]

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