Production becomes informational in character. As Marx said: “invention becomes a business.” What is more inventive than a tech start-up? Or a hacker gone corporate? Or, dare we say, the figure of the hacker itself? Informational accumulation is the name of the game, working for free a part of the rules. The new factory has been constructed and it is right in your living room, sitting in your backpack, resting in your pocket.
Bitcoin, the alternative, digital, cryptographically protected peer-to-peer currency, was designed against third-party monetary institutions like banks and governmental treasuries. It rejects the global hegemony established by capitalism via international (governmental or otherwise) regulatory agencies that were established in attempt to exert control over the increasingly connected world market. Bitcoins are only achievable in our contemporary digital world, attainable only after certain benchmarks of computing power and sophistication are reached, and spread out their operational work-load to a network of free participants. To use Bitcoins is to work for Bitcoins.