Lo Stato moderno e la sfida del bitcoin

Abstract

Marilena Macaluso's chapter focuses on the 'challenge' of bitcoin by analysing the transformation of the concept of money in the transition to 'virtual currency' starting from Weber's reflections on the functions of money and the importance of the monetary monopoly for the modern state. If, on the one hand, the role of the state continues to remain relevant in the monetary system, on the other hand, the great transformations that mark post-modernity bring new actors onto the scene, who privatise the issuing and transferring of bitcoins, thus profoundly shaking up traditional modes of regulation and the role of centralised monetary authorities. This entails the return of pre-modern elements in the definition of the modes of currency issuance and exchange: from the barter metaphor for bitcoin transactions to the cryptographic privatisation of the minting of virtual currency in an anonymous and only apparently horizontal system, which aspires to regulate itself without intermediaries and in opposition to states.