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Community in a Crowd: Bitcoin and the Quest for Liberty in Tel Aviv

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Volume 3

Egalitarianism

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Community in a Crowd

Bitcoin and the Quest for Liberty in Tel Aviv

Matan Shapiro

Made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license with support from University of Bergen.

262 pages, 10 illus., bibliog., index

ISBN  978-1-83695-299-2 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (January 2026)


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Reviews

“This book is a thoroughly researched, detailed and conceptually thought-out example of what we call ‘ethnographic theory’ – which is really the best kind of anthropology.” • Diana Espírito Santo, Universidad Católica de Chile

Description

Set in Tel Aviv’s Bitcoin Embassy between 2017 and 2019, Community in a Crowd explores the everyday activities and social dynamics of Israeli Bitcoin enthusiasts. It examines how participants promoted Libertarian narratives and ritualized practices to challenge the moral authority of the ‘centralized’ political-economic order. Revisiting Bitcoin’s popular association with radical individualism, the book contrasts the sprawling, impersonal crowds of online trading with the formation of an intimate, egalitarian community through in-person encounters. Advancing a new theoretical framework, it offers insights into contemporary mass movements grounded in techno-utopian visions of society and reconsiders how decentralized technologies foster both anonymity and solidarity.

Matan Shapiro is a Social Anthropologist currently researching synoptic surveillance and changing notions of alterity online as part of the ERC-funded SAMCOM Project at the department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London.

Subject: Political and Economic Anthropology
Area: Middle East & Israel

Community in a Crowd by Matan Shapiro is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) with support from University of Bergen.

OA ISBN: 978-1-83695-301-2



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