@article{Tekobbe_McKnight_2016, title={Indigenous cryptocurrency: Affective capitalism and rhetorics of sovereignty}, volume={21}, url={https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6955}, DOI={10.5210/fm.v21i10.6955}, abstractNote={<p>Financial technologies embody and shape notions of social, as well as financial, worth. New digital ‘alt-finance’ systems, including the blockchain technology underlying Bitcoin and similar ‘cryptocurrencies,’ are no exception: technology, rhetoric, imagined users and non-users, and a long history of sociotechnical, political, and cultural relations are all elements in a dynamic assemblage with wide-ranging consequences. This paper examines the rise and fall of one alt-finance system: MazaCoin, a Bitcoin variant intended to benefit the Oglala Lakota of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The story of MazaCoin is one of an attempt to unite two apparently divergent sociotechnical assemblages: (1) a libertarian, elite technology of cryptocurrency, and (2) a richly traditional indigenous community with a deep desire for cultural survivance, bound up in a precarious economy left behind in the wake of more than a century of genocide.</p>}, number={10}, journal={First Monday}, author={Tekobbe, Cindy and McKnight, John Carter}, year={2016}, month={Sep.} }