New Philosopher-Led Bitcoin Research Institute
The University of Wyoming has launched a Bitcoin Research Institute, headed by associate professor of philosophy Bradley Rettler.
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It’s the first academic institute dedicated to research on Bitcoin, according to Nik Hoffman of Bitcoin Magazine, who writes:
The institute aims to elevate the quality and impact of Bitcoin research by creating faculty positions for Bitcoin research, incentivizing and rewarding good academic research on Bitcoin, encouraging young scholars to pursue Bitcoin research projects, and providing workshops on related papers and books. It will also connect researchers interested in Bitcoin and provide peer-reviewed research for journalists, policymakers, and the public.
Professor Rettler told Inside Higher Ed that he does not want the public to think he is “shilling Bitcoin,” adding: “We’re not telling people to buy it; we’re exploring the dimensions of the existence of Bitcoin.” IHE reports:
The Bitcoin institute will be housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, as Rettler plans to foster an interdisciplinary approach that focuses on the intersections of Bitcoin and various fields of study, including philosophy, law, energy and environmental science and computer science.
Professor Rettler is co-author of Resistance Money: A Philosophical Case for Bitcoin. One of his co-authors, Andrew M. Bailey, currently professor of humanities and philosophy at Yale-NUS, will be joining the Institute in 2025. You can check out Professor Bailey’s syllabus for his Philosophy & Economics of Bitcoin course here.
The Bitcoin Research Institute was funded in part by a $1.5 million grant from investor Mark Casey.
It seems oddly specific to have a research institute dedicated to Bitcoin. I suppose the main donor has made that a condition of their donation so as to continue to promote the currency, but I’m surprised it’s not the Cryptocurrency Research Institute or something like that.
Thanks, Bruce — in fact, a focus on bitcoin in particular for this new Institute was a point on which we insisted, and on which the lead donor agreed.
Most cryptocurrencies were launched by a foundation or company which minted tokens for free and then sold them to investors. They are small networks dominated by insiders. Bitcoin is quite different; it’s more like the internet itself: an open protocol. If you’re curious about the other ways in which bitcoin stands apart, and why it commands special interest for researchers and in the classroom, I’d recommend Chapter 3 of _Resistance Money_ or ‘Bitcoin is King’, co-authored with Craig Warmke.
Thanks, for the benefit of others I found chapter 3 on your book’s website. It’s worth pointing out that Ethereum is also an open protocol: its codebase is open source, anyone can participate, and its blockchain is public. Of course, Bitcoin has some important differences as your chapter explains.
In the linked InsideHigherEd article, right before the quote in which Professor Rettler says he’s not “shilling Bitcoin,” he explains why this work couldn’t simply be done within the university’s already existing Center for Blockchain and Digital Innovation:
So to be clear, the institute is not about selling BitCoin. Rather, it is a place for academic analysis of why BitCoin is unique and awesome and better than fiat currency and other cryptocurrencies.
See also the titles of the Books, Academic Papers, and Op-Eds listed on the Institute’s homepage (and in Prof Bailey’s reply below): https://www.uwyo.edu/philrelig/bitcoin/index.html
Or note that, on that same page, the examples listed under “Why a Bitcoin Research Institute?” are all about the need for academic research to debunk commonly accepted criticisms of BitCoin.
This couldn’t be a general Cryptocurrency Research Institute because that wouldn’t be compatible with its central pro-BitCoin advocacy mission.
Hi Derek — long time no see since that grad conference at Brown some 17 years ago!
I would say that our mission is better described as working towards understanding or informed evaluation rather than pure advocacy. Bitcoin is simply too important to not get serious attention from all sorts of disciplinary angles, unified by philosophy.
Some of our published work to date takes a substantive stand on bitcoin (thanks for checking that out!). We show how bitcoin is inferior to some fiat currencies on a number of dimensions (volatility in purchasing power, for example), and inferior to some other cryptocurrencies on yet others (privacy, for example). But despite all that, we’ve argued that bitcoin remains net good for the world. That particular debate — is bitcoin net good? – is by no means closed, however, and many other important research questions remain open. We’d like to see better work done on all of them, and hope to nurture this emerging field of interdisciplinary study, even from perspectives that differ from our own.
Andrew,
Thanks for the reply – and yes, what a blast from the past!
If you’re concerned that the Institute not to appear (or, indeed, not functionally to be) primarily an advocacy project, I would caution you to think about how you present yourselves and your work on the Institute’s page. There are a number of potentially neutral titles mixed in with clear boosterism. Add to this that most (all?) of the affiliated faculty seem to be coauthors of a book that makes “A Philosophical Case for Bitcoin.”
Even more telling, I think is the answer to the question “Why a Bitcoin Research Institute?” that I mentioned above. If there is an important need for better academic work on Bitcoin beyond merely debunking its critics, why not mention those as part of your mission statement?
I actually found some of what I saw in skimming your course syllabus much more promising. In particular, I liked the Week 4 Practicum assignment to critically evaluate 10-year-old pro- and anti-Bitcoin articles. That seems like a really good way to teach students to cast a critical eye both toward excessive techno-utopianism and industry hype and toward the reflexive curmudgeonly cynicism of skeptics like me. Indeed, I think it’s a really good template for similar assignments about other trends and innovation in technology and society (the internet, MOOCs, VR, abortion, birth control, gay marriage, voting rights, television, novels, co-ed schools, zoning laws, etc).
I would hope that the Institute’s educational materials aimed at Wyoming’s public schools will provide a similarly strong basis for critical evaluation of the promise and peril of Bitcoin and its competitors.
Imagine a Center for the Study of Democracy. Such a center would likely attract leadership with substantive views — perhaps even those who’ve argued in their published research that democracy is for the best, prominent mainstream critiques notwithstanding. They might write a book with a subtitle like “A Philosophical Case for Democracy”, and remain beyond reproach. One would hope that such a center would also support work by critics too: to invite them to workshops, examine their evidence, and to engage their arguments in good faith.
This is what we envision for bitcoin. The first faculty to affiliate with the Institute have views here, as one can guess from subtitles alone (“A Philosophical Case Both For and Against Bitcoin” just didn’t have the same ring to it). This is often the way of intellectual work: you look at the evidence, and in its light, all the while engaging those who disagree, take an actual stand on things. Mere boosterism or advocacy, by contrast, discounts relevant evidence, or declines to engage critics in good faith.
At present, bitcoin critics who often have little idea what they’re talking about are in the driver’s seat in both journalism and policy. They derive truly wild conclusions (“In 2020 Bitcoin will consume more power than the world does today”) on the basis of demonstrable errors. Cleaning up their mess is a top priority for anyone interested in seriously evaluating bitcoin. We hope for better critics to come to the fore. Some already have — Micah Warren, for example — and are good friends and invaluable resources even for academics who take a more net positive view of bitcoin. All to the good!
The parallel doesn’t really work. Democracy isn’t a product you can invest in, whose value increases the more you can convince others to do the same.
Thanks, Castorp! I was responding to the suspicion that faculty involved with an institute studying some item shouldn’t have substantive opinions about that item or give reasons for them in print. A little reflection on parallel cases shows that this suspicion can’t be right.
The personal benefit point is different (and you can see, below, some other thoughts on that from Professor Rettler). But here, too, parallels are helpful. It would be rather goofy to insist that women musn’t participate in an Institute for Feminist Philosophy, on the grounds that they suffer from a conflict of interest or stand to personally benefit, should the Institute succeed in its mission. Much better to concede that it is okay to study things that you are personally involved in or that have material implications for your quality of life. Along similar lines, it would be quite strange to insist that IR theorists studying American monetary empire divest of all US dollars or dollar derivatives, or that economists working on portfolio theory maintain no portfolios themselves. Skin in the game is well and good. What matters is disclosure, and, above all, the substance of the arguments given.
Do any of the researchers involved have a financial stake in Bitcoin?
Thanks for asking; disclosures are important. We’ve stated on resistance.money and in the book that, because of the results of our research, we use bitcoin.
>We’ve stated on resistance.money and in the book that, because of the results of our research, we use bitcoin.
I think one way to evaluate this sort of thing is to look at the order of how things came to be. For example: did you have a financial stake in Bitcoin since long ago, like, say, when you were in graduate school, and when bitcoin was substantially cheaper and presumably before you had done much of your current research into it? If so, one might think that you invested in Bitcoin, got a great return, and then later conducted deep research into it after a substantial windfall — as opposed to carefully conducting research first and only then buying into it.
I think the conflict of interest issue is much greater than is really acknowledged in the above disclosure. In so many other domains a conflict of interest is a real serious concern, and not something to be waved off by disclosure and imploring people to just focus on the arguments. The above comparisons to a Democracy Center or a Feminist Center seem naive beyond belief.
It reminds me of professors who require students to buy their overpriced textbook for the class (“But I require my textbook because I’ve come to believe it’s the best!”), but, like, several orders of magnitude worse. I mean, you can see that right? From the outside it looks like this: 1) you think a company/asset/technology is world changing and a net positive 2) you put your personal money into the company/asset/technology, 3) you promote and boost this company/asset/technology in your teaching and research, 4) a rich benefactor funds ways to further market and boost the company/asset/technology, 5) you profit. This is worrisome even if you are right that the company/asset/technology is world changing and a net positive.
I think, as others point out, a lot of this would be at least somewhat mitigated if the Institute didn’t have such a “boosterism” feel to it, but it seems like the boosterism is baked into the Institute since the Institute is solely going to focus on Bitcoin, and, so it seems, how great Bitcoin is.