Posts By: Geert Lovink

Review of Benjamin Wallace’s The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto

By Geert Lovink, August 13, 2025

Benjamin Wallace’s The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto (2025) is disappointing. One already knows at page one that this American journalist will not be successful in unveiling the so-called ‘real’ identity of the Bitcoin inventor. Due to its narrow methodology, the “fifteen-year quest to unmask the secret genius behind crypto” delivers a profoundly uncritical investigation. The one [...]

Link list on NFTs, crypto art, blockchain and other MoneyLab issues (part 21)

By Geert Lovink, July 16, 2025

What You Need to Know about Roman Storm’s Tornado Cash Trial https://cointelegraph.com/news/roman-storm-tornado-cash-trial-what-need-know New book: Finance Aesthetics. A Critical Glossary https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-press/publications/finance-aesthetics/ Interview with Jacob Silverman https://parallaxviews.podbean.com/e/jsilverman6-25/ Yancey Strickler: Forget Hustle Culture – Behold the Artist Corporation (back to the MoneyLab origins) https://www.ted.com/talks/yancey_strickler_forget_hustle_culture_behold_the_artist_corporation Defendants Charged in Conspiracy for over $263 Million Crypto Thefts, Money Laundering, Home Break-Ins [...]

Link list on NFTs, crypto art, blockchain and other MoneyLab issues (part 20)

By Geert Lovink, March 6, 2025

Jacob Silverman: Javier Milei’s Crypto Scandal Is Part of a Larger Network of Grift and Graft https://www.thenation.com/article/society/javier-mileis-crypto-scandal-is-part-of-a-larger-network-of-grift-and-graft/ See also: https://cointelegraph.com/news/timeline-five-world-leaders-memecoin-scandal-trump & https://www.lazarusbounty.com “Cryptocurrency cannot be seized and is highly liquid. The logic of violence has completely changed. Now wealth is global, and we are going to see massive inequality everywhere. You can’t fix the world. [...]

Just Out: ALGOFFSHORE The Art of Automating Tax Evasion by RYBN.ORG

By Geert Lovink, December 17, 2024

The ALGOFFSHORE series of flowcharts (RYBN.ORG, 2017-2021) appearing here in book format presents five ready-to-use strategies for evading taxes or social and environmental obligations. While the systems proposed in this publication only exist virtually, they are intentionally activable. En passant, these flowcharts document how contemporary financial engineering allows multinationals and enterprises to optimize profits, render [...]

Link list on NFTs, crypto art, blockchain and other MoneyLab issues (part 19)

By Geert Lovink, November 1, 2024

Molly White about FTX Caroline Ellison: woman with agency or a helpless pawn? https://www.citationneeded.news/caroline-ellison-sentencing/ Who was Len Sassaman, and why might HBO think he is Satoshi Nakamoto? https://cointelegraph.com/news/len-sassaman-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin Who is Peter Todd, the Man Named by HBO as Bitcoin’s Mystery Creator Satoshi Nakamoto? https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/10/08/who-is-peter-todd-the-man-named-by-hbo-as-bitcoins-mystery-creator-satoshi-nakamoto/ Who is Nick Szabo, the Man Some Believe is Bitcoin Inventor [...]

Interview with Rachel O’Dwyer about Tokens, The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform

By Geert Lovink, June 8, 2024

It is said that money is being replaced by tokens. Think of phone credit, airtime, gift vouchers or game tokens. Platforms see themselves as the new banks, generating and controlling new flows of value. Irish scholar and co-editor of Neural magazine Rachel O’Dwyer has recently published an insightful study on the matter. In her book [...]

BLOCKCHAIN: AFTER PROTOCOLS Special issue of Espace – art actue

By Geert Lovink, May 6, 2024

—Call for Contributions— Edited by Nathalie Casemajor in collaboration with Erik Bordeleau https://espaceartactuel.com/en/call/ In 2023 the Centre Pompidou acquired a group of works dealing with the relations between blockchain and artistic creation. Most of the works consist of Net Art, which relies on internet connectivity protocols. Curators Marcella Lista and Philippe Bettinelli situate them within [...]

Link list on NFTs, crypto art, blockchain and other MoneyLab issues (part 18)

By Geert Lovink, April 30, 2024

‘Dubai’s Fyre Festival’: Crypto investors caught in chaotic UAE floods https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/dubai-fyre-festival-crypto-investors-chaotic-floods Molly White (x2) on Sam Bankman-Fried’s sentence, 25 years in jail https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2024/mar/28/sam-bankman-fried-prison-crypto-regulation https://www.citationneeded.news/sam-bankman-fried-sentenced/ On the Brink of a Dramatic Change: The Digitalization of Money https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/on-the-brink-of-a-dramatic-change-the-digitalization-of-money Stuart Kells: Alice™ – The biggest untold story in the history of money (via Patrice Riemens) https://www.mup.com.au/books/alice-electronic-book-text Introducing Composer, [...]

Link list on NFTs, crypto art, blockchain and other MoneyLab issues (part 17)

By Geert Lovink, November 22, 2023

Why I am Cryptophic https://www.bvp.com/atlas/why-i-m-cryptophobic Pop-up Community zuzalu, Istanbul, November 2023 https://zuzalu.city/ https://zuzalu.notion.site/Homepage-cb20817c7ca54ca6a151915babd03c38 Are NFTs Dead? https://dappgambl.com/nfts/dead-nfts/ Jacob Silverman: Blowing Up the Crypto Cartel https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/blowing-up-the-crypto-cartel-silverman SafeMoon executives withdrew $200 million https://fortune.com/crypto/2023/11/01/sec-allegations-safemoon-200-million-mcclarens-luxury-homes-travel/ Joan Westerberg: Sam Bankman-Fried is a feature, not a bug https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/sam-bankman-fried-is-a-feature-not-a-bug The fake hitman, the crypto king and a wild revenge plan gone bad [...]

Program MoneyLab #13 – Krypto: Decrypting the Artist, @ NeMe, Limmasol/Cyprus

By Geert Lovink, October 27, 2023

Updates on the conference/exhibition website: https://www.neme.org/projects/moneylab13 Sustaining its interest in presenting insightful new critical ideas on the developments of the digital domain and how that is affecting our society and economy, NeMe, and the Institute of Network Cultures, present the 13th edition of MoneyLab. The overall aim of MoneyLab is to deconstruct, and reveal the [...]