Search

Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, have garnered significant attention in scholarship and beyond. Geographical work on cryptocurrencies has focussed on how their energy demand interacts with local communities and economies. Less is said about the organization of cryptoasset firms and their associated demands. This paper illuminates the complex geographies of one such firm, Bitfury Group, to investigate the global and national forms and structures such companies take and the factors encouraging them to concentrate operations in certain areas. To investigate the latter, we adopt the case study of Bitfury's operations in Georgia, a South-Caucasian country where its presence is significant. We adapt Haberly et al.'s analytical framework to explore Bitfury's geographical dimensions. We highlight how cheap electricity, regulatory and taxation regimes, personal encounters and personalities, and the materialities of hardware and energy-saving technology define these geographies and illuminate how Bitfury actively curates advantageous regulatory spaces. We encourage future work exploring Blockchain and Bitcoin technologies to understand the companies involved as simultaneously material and virtual, and as centrepieces in global networks interweaving production and finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of differences in geopolitical preferences between the titular nationalities and ethnic minorities has been thoroughly documented for the Association Agreement countries and other post-Soviet states. This paper goes beyond simply identifying the existence of this "ethnic gap" in geopolitical preferences, by also testing some of the common theories that try to explain it. To do so, I use different regression analyses based on survey data from Georgia (2015–2021). The results of a first multivariate analysis that aims to explain the ethnic gap show that the linguistic differences between the titular nationalities and the ethnic groups explain a higher percentage of the gap in support for the EU than differences related to ideology, values, and information. Furthermore, a second analysis that divides the sample into different ethnic groups reveals that certain variables influence the geopolitical preferences of members of the titular nationalities and members of each of the studied ethnic minorities in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]