IISER MOHALI

About the Speaker: Professor Christoph Scherrer is a Full Professor Emeritus of Globalization and Politics, Non-Resident Senior Fellow at Kassel Institute for Sustainability and Associate Fellow of the Global Labour University. He was the Executive Director of the International Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD) at the University of Kassel, Germany, and a Global Labour University founding member. His research focuses on the social dimensions of global economic governance. His recent publications include Fostering the crisis of supply chains: the institutional dimension, in: Gold and Wieland (eds.) The Supply Chain: A System in Crisis, Edward Elgar (2024); Beyond the Dyad: Power Relations in Global Exploitation Chains from an Institutionalist and Gramscian Perspective, in: Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power (2023); The Political Economy of Asset versus Consumer Inflation, in: Yağcı (ed.) Central Banking in a Post-Pandemic World, Routledge (with N. Horn, 2023); Handbook on Critical Political Economy and Public Policy, Edward Elgar (with A. Garcia and J. Wullweber, 2023).

Abstract: The Treasury Committee of the UK House of Commons declared cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin to be a new asset class with no intrinsic value and, therefore, similar to gambling. However, the House of Commons has yet to act on this finding. US Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler filed a series of lawsuits against many of the biggest players in the crypto industry. Yet Gensler cast the deciding vote that approved bitcoin spot exchange traded funds. My talk will analyze the rationale for regulating crypto assets and the limitations of attempts to regulate the crypto asset industry. My analysis is guided by poststructuralist insights on finance and Gramscian tools for exploring hegemonic discourses. The focus is on the United States as the location of key cryptocurrency actors and financial regulators.