Tracing the Politics of Cryptomania
This Month on DataSyn
With the year coming to a close, we bring you a special issue where we put the spotlight on a technology sector that has witnessed a striking resurgence and is positioned to become a key node of global politics going forward. This is, of course, the cryptosphere.
Our first three pieces this month look to map different facets of this story, from exploring the industry’s exploits in the Global South in recent years, to unravelling the dangerous new stakes of stablecoins and their patronage by the US government, and digging into the corrupt nexus of political and business interests that stand at the heart of crypto’s prominence today.
There are also two bonus pieces to check out! In the first, we have a reflective discussion of AI and its potential for local development problems. In our second, a fiery critique of mainstream discourse on online gendered violence, and a call to radicalize our approach.
Editorial
Dear Reader,
With 2025 rolling to a close, the tech newscycle in December seems to be highlighting the many crisis fronts that have emerged over the course of this year. And as one would expect, at the heart of it is today’s whirlwind AI industry. In the US, this was in the news again in recent weeks as Trump announced an executive order to block state regulation related to artificial intelligence. The rationale given is now familiar, citing the stakes of the AI race and its centrality to America’s ‘strategic interest’, the claim is that there is no time to fool around with regulatory nuance. The space must be cleared for Silicon Valley to take the reins. Sadly, it is a logic that we have seen play out across the globe this year, from Europe to parts of the Majority World, where the fear of being left behind on AI is deployed as the easiest way to curb any democratic oversight.
That said, it is worth noting that the reason this action was undertaken as an executive order is that it lacked sufficient support to be passed through Congress. In fact, state representatives across partisan lines have continued to be defiant and are pushing ahead with plans to pass local laws and also to challenge the federal mandate in courts. This is a heartening development, for it points to a bottom-up groundswell of public opinion that is rejecting the geo-political framing and demanding a serious engagement with the dangers of this technological paradigm. Moreover, this trend is not restricted to the US. A recent global study showed that less than half of people felt they could trust Artificial Intelligence products, and a solid majority was on board for more stringent regulation.
This widespread sense of anxiety is easy to explain, given the sheer breadth of problems that have been linked with the rapid and unmitigated proliferation of AI over the last year. Just this past week, there was another round of queasiness in the stock markets over the prospect of an AI bubble. Given the degree to which capital’s narrative of a rosy future is balanced on the fortunes of this one industry, the consequences of hitting even a minor impasse are forecast to be devastating.
What is more, as much reporting this month has brought into relief, the fallout of AI for decent jobs is looking increasingly bleak. Indeed, the pressure is already being felt by new graduates, as entry-level white-collar jobs are the first in line to be automated away. With some tech CEOs claiming that as many as half of all such jobs could be lost over the next five years, the ripples of this shift are being felt by the current generation across the board. Such jobs have been the stepping stones for a decent career in an economy that is already reeling from years of stagnation, and levels of inequality that haven’t been seen for over a hundred years. In addition, this problem is exacerbated in regions of the South, where labor is increasingly being clamped into microwork for AI models. These are segments of the value chain that have little room for growth and condemn these workers to live in perpetual precarity.
If these various alarm bells were not enough, there is also the urgent backdrop of climate change to consider; an area where the insidious role of the tech sector grows more apparent every day. As recent analysts note, one of the unfortunate omissions in the recently concluded COP30 summit was a discussion of precisely this issue. There is now robust evidence that the exorbitant energy needs of AI and the revitalized crypto-sphere are likely to become a major impediment to decarbonization efforts. However, the lure of new profits continues to forestall any serious reckoning with this dilemma. Case in point, this month saw new reporting on Germany’s push to become an AI hub, with the country already boasting the largest number of data centres in Europe. At the same time, this is wreaking havoc on its power grid, with cities like Frankfurt already pushing its electricity infrastructure to the limit, and potentially sacrificing the energy needs of the local population in the process.
We can scarcely afford such short-sighted policy-making, and while the elite continue to flounder in the midst of peril, there is hope in the fact that ordinary people are becoming increasingly assertive about their dissatisfaction with prevailing leadership. From fealty to tech overlords to economic and climate policy, it seems that meaningful change depends on people fighting to take back their democratic polities. The coming year will be a true litmus test of their resolve.
Finally, as we close out 2025 at DataSyn, here’s wishing all of our readers a rejuvenating holiday and a Happy New Year! Do keep an eye out in the coming months, as we unveil some exciting new directions for the newsletter going forward.
The Datasyn Team
DIGITAL DISSENT
The Crypto-State: Crypto-Assets, Authoritarianism and the Legalization of Financial Harm
Jose Atiles
While it has returned to the forefront of the tech industry in recent months, the cryptosphere has been quietly expanding its networks across the global south over the last several years. Drawing particularly on the experiences of Latin America during this time, Jose Atiles paints a vivid picture of this perilous industry and the alliances it has forged with authoritarian politics and capitalist extraction.
Read on.
THE POLICY TABLE
Stablecoins: The Ultimate Tool of Currency Hegemony
Oguz Genc
Perhaps more than anything else, stablecoins have been the focal point of the crypto-sphere’s renewal and official patronage under the current US administration. Untangling the dense web of geopolitics, financial engineering, and technological possibility, Oguz Genc provides a lucid exploration of this ‘stablecoin gambit’ and what dangers it poses for the future of financial regulation.
Read on.
THE BIG EXCESS
A New Age of Crypto-Authoritarianism
Antulio Rosales
How should we think about the relationship between cryptocurrencies and the inner workings of elite power? One way is to map the corrupt nexus of vested interests that are responsible for the proliferation of new initiatives and crypto assets. Antulio Rosales takes up this effort, bringing to light the intimate links between the Trump administration and the tech community it has so vociferously sought to champion.
Read on.
THE NEW DIVERGENCE
Possibilism in the Age of AI
Laura Mann
In her presentation at the conference Towards Regenerative AI: Frames for Inclusive, Indigenous, and Intentional Innovation, Laura Mann reflected on what it might mean to move the AI discussion to local contexts and their own development challenges. What new forms and possibilities could we conceive outside of Silicon Valley’s tired frame? We produce here an edited transcript of this thoughtful address.
Read on.
FEMINIST DIGITALITY
Sometimes Silence is Violence. And Sometimes Featured Content is Violence. Reflections on the 2025 16 Days of Activism Campaign
Bama Athreya
Campaigns like this month’s ‘16 Days of Activism’ point to how far concerns about gendered violence in the digital sphere have penetrated mainstream public discourse. Yet, where have we reached in actually confronting the root causes of this crisis? Bama Athreya provides a sobering reality check, and a critical stock-taking of the many points of failure in prevailing approaches to the problem.
Read on.
The Sins & Synergies Lounge
To close out the year, start with Bubble or Nothing from the Institute for Public Enterprise, a rigorous assessment of the boom in data centre development that cuts through hype to ask whether today’s massive public and private investments are building durable economic value or setting the stage for another tech bust.
Also read the Data Workers’ Inquiry’s The Emotional Labor Behind AI Intimacy, a powerful report that foregrounds the stories of chat moderators and data annotation workers to illuminate the often-invisible affective and psychological labor underpinning companion bots, therapeutic chatbots, and other forms of “intimate” AI.
Don’t miss The Dark Side of the Boom, a special collection of data-driven journalism from Earth Journalism Network documenting the environmental and social costs of resource-intensive digital technologies in Asia. A critical companion to this piece is Rest of World’s documentation of the number of data centres operating in regions that are too hot to support its ideal operations.
Also worth watching is Twitter: Breaking the Bird, a revealing documentary that traces the platform’s origins from a simple status-update tool to a company shaped by early power struggles, technical fragility, and unresolved governance failures — a timely reminder that many of Twitter’s deepest problems were baked in long before Elon Musk’s takeover. Before its launch in the new year, take a peek into Nick Srnicek’s upcoming book, Silicon Empires, through this discussion of the book’s core arguments on the logics of expansion driving various Silicon Empires.
Also put on your radar Big Tech’s Invisible Hand from Agência Pública, a major investigative series tracing how technology companies exert influence through lobbying, infrastructure, and quiet regulatory capture across the Global South.
Finally, end the year with Cory Doctorow’s inspiring reflection on the resonances between the movements for ecological justice and digital justice.
Post-script
DataSyn is a free monthly newsletter from the Center for Global Digital Justice, featuring content hosted by Bot Populi. DataSyn is supported through the Fair, Green and Global Alliance.
Have thoughts about what we carried? Want to contribute?
Contact us at newsletter.datasyn@centerforglobaldigitaljustice.org