The PROMISE of CRYPTO PROTOTYPE: PLATFORM POWER & CENTRALIZED CRYPTO EXCHANGE PLATFORMS
Date
2024-12-11
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Centralized crypto exchange (CEX) platforms offer to eliminate the technical barriers to crypto adoption. But how has an industry ostensibly committed to decentralization come to rely on such centralized entities? The literature analyzing CEX platforms through a political economy lens is sparse, and as crypto grows and becomes more interconnected with the traditional finance system, deeper understanding is required. This study explores how centralized CEX platforms (Binance, FTX, and Coinbase) mediate the promises of crypto through the financialization and regulatory logics of platform power, in the context of the entangled technology and venture capital industries. I construct a theoretical framework of platform power framework that captures a set of analytical perspectives on platforms, and I employ a modified stack economization model as a tool to enable a platform power political economic analysis. My findings demonstrate that CEX platforms extract and transform the original visions for crypto to produce the current promise of crypto prototype. They eclipse the neoclassical conception of the market and instead constitute stacked opportunities for financialization, where CEX platform power manifests in power asymmetries premised upon recentralization and extraction. In so doing, CEXs leverage neoliberal discursive strategies in their policy advocacy. Based on these findings, I argue that CEX platforms deploy the promise of crypto prototype to accumulate, benefit from, and perpetuate platform power.
Description
Keywords
crypto, centralized crypto exchange platform, platform power, critical political economy, ideology, stack economization, financialization, regulation
Citation
McLean, J. (2024). The promise of crypto prototype: platform power & centralized crypto exchange platforms (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.