Biography
Al Lim is a PhD student in the joint Anthropology and Environmental Studies program at Yale, and his research explores the intersection of infrastructure and the environment in Laos. He received his MSc in Urbanisation and Development from the London School of Economics, and his BA (Hons) in Urban Studies from Yale-NUS. At Yale, he coordinates the Environmental Anthropology Collective and is a Graduate Fellow at the Asian American Cultural Center. He has also previously worked at Deloitte and the Earth Observatory of Singapore.
Paper Abstract
"It's [Bitcoin's] not an investment, it's a religion," according to global investor Mark Mobius in a CNBC interview in November 2021. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency have extended a surprising grip over global financial markets and retail investors since its inception in 2009 by enigmatic founder Satoshi Nakamoto. In the spirit of this claim, I read Bitcoin as a religious practice, drawing from earlier studies on the religion of the market and consumerism. Specifically, I pay attention to Bitcoiners' sacred days and narratives as important elements of their practice. While a path to salvation has been charted for many, this paper connects Bitcoin to its underbelly. What has been missing from the global discourse is a contextualized lens to investigate its local, ecological impacts. To illustrate this point, I focus on Laos and how the country's uptake of cryptocurrency has the potential to exacerbate existing ecological consequences due to immense energy consumption. Further dam construction to power cryptocurrency will indelibly worsen existing conditions along the Mekong River. This paper thus argues that the deterritorialization of Bitcoin and its financial flows have a set of reterritorialized consequences. Here, Bitcoin manifests as an emphatic "maybe," a space of possibility that can overturn the mundane, and as an ambivalent middle ground between hope and environmental degradation.