Globalisation & Law Network seminar with Andrea Leiter
What does the recent victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential elections mean for the future of cryptocurrency? And what societal implications will the newly awakened ‘crypto space’ have? These and many other pressing issues were addressed by Dr Andrea Leiter, Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam Center for International Law at the University of Amsterdam, at the Globalisation & Law Network seminar held on 13 November 2024. During the seminar, Andrea introduced her draft paper ‘Cryptostatecraft: Recoding Values in the Digital Economy’. The discussion was led by Lukasz Dziedzic and Henrique Jerônimo Bezerra Marcos.
At the beginning of the seminar, Andrea briefly discussed how cryptocurrency increasingly shapes politics in the US and beyond. Then, she introduced the concept of ‘polycrisis’ (originally coined by French philosopher Edgar Morin), which serves as a theoretical background for her research. Andrea then elaborated on the three main crises – the crisis of trust in public institutions, the crisis of values, and the crisis of critique. After that, she proceeded to discuss blockchain as a particularly potent technology of statecraft. According to Andrea, blockchain provides two key affordances: the independence of legal institutions and token engineering. The presentation was concluded with some reflections on Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) – digital communities without centralized authority – which present novel challenges for law and politics.
Andrea’s presentation sparked a rich discussion which revolved around the evolving notion of democratic governance in the age of blockchain, the role of privacy and anonymity in networked sovereignties, and the status of cryptocurrency under EU law.
You are warmly invited to register for the upcoming research seminars organised by the Globalisation & Law Network to stay updated on the current challenges of law and governance.
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