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Alternative Currency Use in Canada

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Alternative Currency Use in Canada Making Money: Alternative Currency use in Canada by John A. Graham, B.A. (Hons.) A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Sociology with Concentration in Quantitative Methodology Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2015, John A. Graham Abstract Drawing on national-level online news sources covering Bitcoin from 2012 until September 23, 2014, this thesis analyzes the ways in which the Canadian government has sought to socially construct Bitcoin, an electronic peer-to-peer value transfer system and currency, within the Canadian legal framework. This thesis analyzes theoretical propositions about alternative currencies made by Geoffrey Ingham, Peter North and Edward Castronova by applying the contributions of these theorists to the present Canadian social context. 166 National Post, CBC News and Globe and Mail articles were analyzed using a mixed-methods approach, by means of a Thematic Analysis and Factor Analysis. This study determined that the state has constructed Bitcoin as a de facto currency in Canada for the accumulation of taxes while retaining de jure currency status for the Canadian Dollar. In doing so, the state has allowed Bitcoin to proliferate in Canada as an avenue with which to advance the state’s monitoring of Canadian financial activity. ii Acknowledgements I’m not very good at these things, but I would like to acknowledge the help of a few people who made this project possible. I’d like to thank my parents, Andrew and Judy for being supportive, as well as my brother Brian, sister-in-law Julie and their family for providing me with great company, conversation and Sunday afternoon lunches. I would like to thank my advisor Dr. George Pollard for providing constructive and helpful feedback when I needed it. I don’t think I could have asked for a better advisor for this project. I would also like to thank Dr. Neil Gerlach for taking the time to review this thesis and Dr. Michael Wohl for agreeing to be the project’s external. Lastly I would like to thank green tea and the music of Richard D. James, who have for years proven themselves to be excellent study aids. iii Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. iv List of Tables .................................................................................................................... vi List of Illustrations .......................................................................................................... vii List of Appendices .......................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1: Basis of Present Study ................................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Alternative Currencies in Canada .......................................................................................... 3 1.3 The Exemplar of this Study in Bitcoin ................................................................................ 12 1.4 In Summary ......................................................................................................................... 15 Chapter 2: Conceptualizing Alternative Currencies ................................................... 16 2.1 The Social Context of Bitcoin ............................................................................................. 16 2.2 Understanding Bitcoin ......................................................................................................... 24 2.3 Making Payments in Bitcoin ............................................................................................... 27 2.4 Canadian Alternative Currencies ......................................................................................... 29 2.5 Remarks ............................................................................................................................... 33 Chapter 3: Review of Literature ................................................................................... 34 3.1 Antiquity and Philosophical Precursors............................................................................... 34 3.2 The Influence of Georg Simmel .......................................................................................... 36 3.3 Gift Economies and Simple Societies.................................................................................. 39 3.4 Capitalist Societies and Marxian Contributions .................................................................. 42 3.5 The Formalist vs. Substantivist Debate ............................................................................... 47 iv 3.6 The Sociology of Debt ......................................................................................................... 49 3.7 Alternative Currencies and Digital Economies ................................................................... 53 3.8 Bitcoin as a Social Construction .......................................................................................... 55 3.9 Review ................................................................................................................................. 57 Chapter 4: Methods of the Present Study..................................................................... 58 4.1 Study Layout and Design .................................................................................................... 58 4.2 Data...................................................................................................................................... 60 4.3 Thematic Analysis ............................................................................................................... 60 4.4 Content Analysis ................................................................................................................. 63 4.5 Justification of Methods ...................................................................................................... 64 4.6 Recapitulation ...................................................................................................................... 65 Chapter 5: Analysis of Data ........................................................................................... 67 5.1 Preliminary Remarks ........................................................................................................... 67 5.2 State Monetary Oversight .................................................................................................... 69 5.3 Analysis of Latent Factors ................................................................................................... 76 5.4 A New Type of Canadian Alternative Currency ................................................................. 83 5.5 Summary .............................................................................................................................. 87 Chapter 6: Conclusion .................................................................................................... 90 6.1 Discussion ............................................................................................................................ 90 6.2 Findings ............................................................................................................................... 95 6.3 Limitations ........................................................................................................................... 98 6.31 Methodological Limitations .......................................................................................... 98 6.32 Theoretical Limitations ................................................................................................. 98 6.4 Implications ....................................................................................................................... 100 v List of Tables Table 1: Canadian Remittances over $1 million (USD), 2014. (World Bank, 2015). ..... 13 Table 2: Correlation Matrix for the Two Factor Model ................................................... 76 Table 3: Frequency of Themes Used with prevalence (%) indicated .............................. 78 Table 4: Principal Axis Factoring with Iterated Communalities ..................................... 80 vi List of Illustrations Illustration 1: How Credit Card transactions are processed (Heggestuen, 2014). .......... 28 Illustration 2: Example of a QR code, a form of square-shaped barcode which contains digital information. The QR code above contains the URL of the Carleton University Department of Sociology and Anthropology website at https://carleton.ca/socanth/. ...... 29 Illustration 3: Dialectical relationship between use value, value and exchange value in Das Kapital; Harvey (2010, p.11). .................................................................................... 44 Illustration 4: Thematic map, indicating main thematic branches of property, taxation, crime, finance and the Bank of Canada. ..........................................................................
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