Crypto-Currencies: From the Fetishism of Gold to Hayek Gold

Abstract

Based on the Marxist perspective of money and particularly Marx’s analysis of the fetishism of money and capital, Nakatani and Mello grapple with the nature of crypto-currencies, especially Bitcoin, highlighting their explosive growth in 2017 as a part of the dynamics of the overaccumulation of capital, which has been circling the world for decades, particularly in financial markets, in search of new and old assets that might serve as the means for the appropriation of fictitious income and which have taken on the most foolish and fetishized forms.