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"The Most Trustworthy Coin": How Ideological Tensions Drive Trust in Bitcoin

Published: 07 November 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Bitcoin is an innovative technological network, a new, non-governmental currency, and a worldwide group of users. In other words, Bitcoin is a complex sociotechnical system with a complex set of risks and challenges for anyone using it. We investigated how everyday users of Bitcoin develop trust in Bitcoin on one of the largest online communities devoted to Bitcoin: the Reddit.com r/bitcoin forum. Using qualitative content analysis, we examined how trust in Bitcoin develops based on contributions to this community. On r/bitcoin, trust in Bitcoin is driven by a pervasive ideology we call the "True Bitcoiner" ideology. This ideological viewpoint in centered on the interpretation of Bitcoin as functionally "trustless" and risk-free. Despite widespread evidence of emerging individual and system-level risks with using Bitcoin, participants continue to maintain this ideological perspective. This ideology consists of three primary beliefs: viewing Bitcoin's technology as more trustworthy than its people; rejecting 'corrupt' social hierarchies related to money; and the importance of accumulating or 'HODLing' quantities of Bitcoin as a strategy to create an ideal future. We conclude that this "True Bitcoiner" ideology is maintained despite contradictory evidence in the world because it allows participants to more easily interpret Bitcoin and make decisions by reducing perceived risk and uncertainty in the system. The role of this ideology on r/bitcoin demonstrates an expanded conceptualization of how trust is created and socially-mediated in socio-technical contexts.

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cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction  Volume 3, Issue CSCW
November 2019
5026 pages
EISSN:2573-0142
DOI:10.1145/3371885
Issue’s Table of Contents
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 07 November 2019
Published in PACMHCI Volume 3, Issue CSCW

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Author Tags

  1. bitcoin
  2. ideology
  3. online communities
  4. reddit
  5. sociotechnical systems
  6. trust

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