Towards a Philosophy of Financial Technologies

Abstract

This special issue introduces the study of financial technologies and finance to the field of philosophy of technology, bringing together two different fields that have not traditionally been in dialogue. The included articles are: Digital Art as 'Monetised Graphics': Enforcing Intellectual Property on the Blockchain, by Martin Zeilinger; Fundamentals of Algorithmic Markets: Liquidity, Contingency, and the Incomputability of Exchange, by Laura Lotti; 'Crises of Modernity' Discourses and the Rise of Financial Technologies in a Contested Mechanized World, by Marinus Ossewaarde; Two Technical Images: Blockchain and High-Frequency Trading, by Diego Viana; and The Blockchain as a Narrative Technology: Investigating the Social Ontology and Normative Configurations of Cryptocurrencies, by Wessel Reijers and Mark Coeckelbergh. Keywords Financial technologies . Philosophy of financial technology . Ethics of financial technologies . Cryptocurrencies . Algorithmic trading This special issue introduces studies of financial technologies and finance to the field of philosophy of technology, bringing together two different fields that have not traditionally been in dialogue.

The Age of FinTech: Implications for Research, Policy and Practice

“…Not surprisingly, the FinTech investment and growth trends are also attracting scholarly attention, evident from special academic journal issues like Journal of Management Information Systems' \Special Issue: Financial Information Systems and the FinTech Revolution" (Gomber et al, 2018), International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Management's \Innovation for Financial Services" and \Towards a Philosophy of Financial Technologies" in Philosophy and Technology (Coeckelbergh et al, 2018). Amongst these, some scholars have argued that the concept of Fin-Tech is not new, dating back nearly 150 years of technology-led shifts in perceptions, processes and practices related to FS (Arner et al, 2016a).…”

Bank Strategy when Facing Financial Technology Competition

“…In the disruptive technology era, markets have influenced and benefited from dramatic progress in all forms of technological operations including computer hardware and software capabilities; optimization of functionality in circuits and processors; telecommunication speed and efficiency; mobile access, particularly, through mobile phones, tablets, and other hand-held devices and wearables; and substantial reductions in manufacturing and shipping costs (Milne, 2016). In the development of technology in the era of the digital economy, the emergence of innovative FinTech has impacted the financial world-including the banking sector, online payments, cryptocurrency, and e-commerce-which is growing rapidly (Coeckelbergh, DuPont, & Reijers, 2018). FinTech will thus form an important part of the development of the new digital economy.…”

Steps towards an ecology of money infrastructures: materiality and cultures of Ripple

“…In the past ten years, the social sciences have mainly understood cryptocurrencies as radically new money forms (Bjerg 2015, Coeckelbergh et al 2018, Hayes 2019 requiring new epistemological tools (Swan and de Filippi 2017). In contrast, this paper takes the emergence of cryptocurrencies and DLT as a provocation to take seriously the infrastructural materiality that underpins all money forms (Maurer 2017).…”