[Commlist] New book: Embedded Digital Money: The Social Unfolding of Bitcoin

New book:

Ilan Talmud
Embedded Digital Money: The Social Unfolding of Bitcoin
Edward Elgar Publishing, 2026
ISBN: 9781035353880

https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/embedded-digital-money-9781035353880.html

“An indispensable book for understanding what Bitcoin is becoming. With 
remarkable clarity, Ilan Talmud shows how digital money emerges through 
the interplay of technology, institutions, regulation, and collective 
imaginaries. A major contribution to the sociology of money and the 
digital economy.”
– Matilde Massó, University of A Coruña, Spain
This book traces Bitcoin’s journey from a novel post-2008 crisis 
experiment to a redefining powerhouse of the financial world. It reveals 
the communities, visionaries, investors, regulators and big banks behind 
this ever-shifting currency, which has come to simultaneously represent 
digital gold and financial ruin.

The book uncovers the ‘folk economics’—laymen imaginaries and 
rituals—which have sustained Bitcoin’s value beyond pure markets through 
recessions, time-warped algorithms and patchy regulations. Chapters 
analyze Bitcoin’s unique temporal orders, where algorithms entwine 
socioeconomic hopes and future imaginations, Bitcoin’s regulatory gaps 
and the architectural role of the state to map the currency as a 
financial asset. Exposing the socially crafted nature of money in the 
digital age, the book argues that Bitcoin has not overthrown banks or 
states but has been absorbed into their web of power plays, fresh 
infrastructures and enduring hierarchies.

Embedded Digital Money is a resource for scholars and students of 
economics and finance, social policy, sociology and political economy. 
Cryptocurrency policy analysts and stakeholders will also benefit from 
its assessment of government fintech regulation.

Contents:
Introduction to Embedded Digital Money
1 Bitcoin and its antecedences: from a peer-to-peer network to a 
private, decentralized currency
2 Money from below
3 Social devices and “folk economics” of Bitcoin community
4 Digital spells: the social time of Bitcoin
5 Bitcoin’s regulatory field: from ambiguity towards discernibility
6 The social experiment of Bitcoin: lessons for the digital economy

Contact: (talmud /at/ soc.haifa.ac.il)



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