Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform

Wherever you look money is being replaced by tokens. These are digital assets, issued by the platforms, that can be traded, but also offer news types of relationships, forms of ownership as well as governance. Bitcoin, Dogecoin, facebook's proposed Libra, as well as other forms of value such as air time, special access, data are the new money within an evolving economy. Platforms are now paying in tokens rather than cash - Amazon's Mechanical Turk offers gift cards, M-Pesa trades in phone calls. But is this a liberation or a dangerous warning of the future? What does it mean when Platforms become the new banks? Tokens opens up this new world and warns that we are unwittingly welcoming new forms of surveillance and discipline. O Dwyer argues that this challenges the balance of power between on the online empires and the state. In effect, the platforms determine the value and the methods of exchange, or allow the value of the asset to be speculated over. They are siphoning vast wealth and power with few regulations. In response, O' Dwyer argues that money's really transformative power comes when we consider it as a 'commons', produced and held collectively.