Plotting/(Counter)plotting Crypto Cities

Keywords: economic geography, land, networks, technology, power, cities, development
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

In this presentation I analyze what I call “cryptoeconomic imaginaries” in economic geography via Sylvia Wynter’s concept of “plotting” as praxis. Cryptocurrency is increasingly becoming a key plot device in consolidating VC tech power and imagining new post-plantation modes of land appropriation and urban development, codified in ideological manifestos, whitepapers, and new city design documents. These cryptoeconomic imaginaries are epitomized in the very real development plot of the so-called “network state.” The Network State is both a techno-utopian crypto manifesto and a strategic development plot for the continued accumulation of wealth and decision-making power, specifically funded by “crypto whales” and VC tech billionaires. Their funded projects include the East Solano Plan under company California Forever (Solano County, CA), Próspera (Honduras), Metropolis (Palau), and the decentralized Praxis Nation, Afropolitan, Itana, among others. Much like property developers before, these crypto capitalists view land as sites of mineral/resource extraction and cities as investment products, largely unconcerned with whom they displace and what ecologies are disturbed in the process. However, a politically diverse resistance to these “network state” projects is aided by digital technologies and social media. Engaging the plot-counterplot dialectic, scholars may turn a critical eye to the plotting strategies of the “network state” and related developments, while learning from resistance movements on the ground leveraging new media and critical technology, together mobilizing a type of (counter)plot work as method that values lands and lives beyond the individual private property profit motive.