Bitcoin’s Identity Crisis and the Prospect of Trustless Money

Abstract Whether it is legally treated as a digital property, a commodity or a security, bitcoin’s identity crisis is mainly caused by its contradictions as a trustless monetary project. The paper argues that bitcoin’s trustlessness is a confusing concept that accounts for its legal and monetary troubles. As explicated by monetary sociologists and economists, money is based on a complex trust architecture. By questioning the interplay between code, trust and law in the monetary realm, the paper aims to enlighten the philosophy of bitcoin’s monetary project, the current trends, and some potential developments for bitcoin and distributed ledger technologies.