The essential guide to this new landscape of NFTs, Web3, Crypto and DAOs and a warning of the political consequences of what happens when platform capitalism comes for the money in your pocket
Wherever you look, money is being replaced by tokens. Digital platforms are issuing new kinds of money-like things, from phone credit, to shares, gift vouchers, game tokens, and customer data. These tokens are used to turn invisible stuff into assets, to pay wages, to track purchases, and to program and specify the terms of financial and political access and inclusion. What does it mean when online platforms become the new banks? What new types of control and discrimination emerge when money is tied to specific apps, or actions, politics or identities?
Tokens opens up this new world. By exploring the history of experiments in extra-monetary economies, O''Dwyer shows that private and grassroots tokens have always ghosted the real economy. But as the large tech platforms
