Bitcoin's Repressed Institutional Dimension

Bitcoin is based above all on the logic of contract and free individual participation, but it also encompasses a collective dimension that the institutionalist approach to money helps clarify. Like any other system, this alternative payment system requires centralizing information on all transactions made so that each of them is validated in the eyes of all members of the community. It is adherence to the common rules written in the software that gives meaning to each bilateral transaction by including such adherence in this “orthogonal” social relationship that is the payment system. The apparent decentralization of Bitcoin does not prevent the emergence of coalitions of actors and regulatory bodies. Finally, the absence of any link to a state, far from illustrating the emergent thesis of an anti-statist currency, is precisely what prevents this payment system from fulfilling the fundamental functions of money. This leads us to reassess the role of the state in André Orléan's institutionalist monetary theory.