Crypto Crises - by Tom Redshaw & Peter Howson (Hardcover)

About the Book

Crypto crises examines the real social impact of cryptocurrency, exposing how an industry built on promises of decentralisation and freedom is deepening inequality, fuelling exploitation, and reshaping power in the digital age.

Book Synopsis

Crypto crises examines how the cryptocurrency industry has become a powerful force in global capitalism. Far from the promise of decentralisation, it reveals how crypto is deepening social inequality, fuelling environmental destruction, and reshaping political power. Drawing on extensive research and vivid examples, the book traces the rise of a new class of "crypto-capitalists" - from billionaire investors and mining conglomerates to populist politicians - who are embedding digital assets at the heart of finance and governance. It exposes the hidden networks of influence linking crypto to Wall Street, Big Tech, and the Global South, where exploitation is reframed as innovation. Provocative and timely, the book offers a critical account of how cryptocurrency's dream of liberation became one of the defining engines of twenty-first-century capitalism.

From the Back Cover

Crypto crises reveals how cryptocurrency has moved from the margins of the internet to the centre of global finance and politics. What was once dismissed as a speculative fad now fuels political campaigns, re-shapes markets, and deepens social and environmental instability.

The book explores how an emerging class of "crypto-capitalists" - investors, miners, developers, and lobbyists - are consolidating wealth and power on a global scale. It investigates the industry's influence on policy, its manipulation of public discourse, and its exploitation of inequality across the Global South. Combining economic sociology, political economy, and environmental critique, the book charts how crypto's promises of liberation and decentralisation have become instruments of control and extraction.

Written with clarity and urgency, this study offers a critical account of one of the defining industries of our time, showing that the real crisis is not in crypto, but in what crypto is doing to the world.

About the Author

Tom Redshaw is Lecturer in Digital Society at the University of Salford
Peter Howson is a technology writer, researcher, and Assistant Professor in International Development at Northumbria University, Newcastle