Creation and Resilience of Decentralized Brands - Bitcoin & the Blockchain

This dissertation is based on a longitudinal ethnographic and netnographic study of the Bitcoin and broader Blockchain community. The data is drawn from 38 in-depth interviews and 200+ informal interviews, plus archival news media sources, netnography, and participant observation conducted in multiple cities: Toronto, Amsterdam, Berlin, Miami, New York, Prague, San Francisco, Cancun, Boston/Cambridge, and Tokyo. Participation at Bitcoin/Blockchain conferences included: Consensus Conference New York, North American Bitcoin Conference, Satoshi Roundtable Cancun, MIT Business of Blockchain, and Scaling Bitcoin Tokyo. The research fieldwork was conducted between 2014-2018. The dissertation is structured as three papers:

• Satoshi is Dead. Long Live Satoshi. The Curious Case of Bitcoin: This paper focuses on the myth of anonymity and how by remaining anonymous, Satoshi Nakamoto, was able to leave his creation open to widespread adoption.
• Tracing the United Nodes of Bitcoin: This paper examines the intersection of religiosity, technology, and money in the Bitcoin community.
• Our Brand Is Crisis: Creation and Resilience of Decentralized Brands Bitcoin & the Blockchain: Drawing on ecological resilience framework as a conceptual metaphor this paper maps how various stabilizing and destabilizing forces in the Bitcoin ecosystem helped in the evolution of a decentralized brand and promulgated more mainstreaming of the Bitcoin brand.