Joe Walton

Virginia Commonwealth University, L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Graduate Student

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Ph.D. of Public Policy; Social & Information Science Researcher and Cybersecurity Consultant at OnSequential.com
Supervisors: Victor Chen, Ph.D., Gurpreet Dhillon, Ph.D., Nancy Stutts, Ph.D., and Myung Jin, Ph.D.
Address: Richmond, Virginia, United States

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Papers by Joe Walton

Why We Use a New Currency: The Role of Trust and Control in Explaining the Perception and Usage of Bitcoin

Dissertation, 2020

Social media, e-commerce, global peer-to-peer technologies, and the near ubiquity of computers an... more Social media, e-commerce, global peer-to-peer technologies, and the near ubiquity of computers and smartphones allow people to interact, trust, and exchange value across traditional socio-economic control boundaries and over significant distances. Since the creation in 2008 of a new cryptographic currency system called Bitcoin, a financial technology market sector of about 250 billion USD has rapidly emerged, raising questions about the nature of currency in society and whether new types of non-national money are warranted and viable. This debate has pitted heterodox economic interests against orthodox economic interests while it has rekindled interest in theories that view money as a social construct with a multitude of potential forms beyond ‘state’ or fiat money, and in forms that are increasingly predicted to be purely digital in the future. This study seeks to explain the policy, social, and economic factors that underlie perceptions and usage of these new currency types. First, I develop a novel theoretical matrix of trust and control to explain the conditions under which people choose to use any monetary system. Then, I test this theory with a quantitative analysis of policy, trust, socio-economic, and cultural factors affecting the perceptions and usage of the new currency systems of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in 28 countries. This analysis draws on usage metrics recorded from the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency network systems, attitudinal data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and European Values Study (EVS), and a proprietary survey of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency perceptions and usage in 15 countries conducted by Ipsos for the behavioral economics research department at ING Group. I performed principal component analyses (PCA) to reduce factors among collected metrics, and I then integrated the findings of the PCA into a series of ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions along three primary vectors: trust, control, and culture. Based on my empirical findings, I group these new currency system users’ personality perspectives into four categories: Evangelists, Pragmatists, Skeptics, and Speculators. The analysis finds Bitcoin and cryptocurrency perceptions and usage are not correlated with the strictness or laxness of public policies concerning Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. The analysis also finds Bitcoin interest as measured by Google Search Trends is not correlated to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency perceptions and usage but is correlated to several lower socio-economic metrics related to crime and lack of confidence in law enforcement and government control. There is more favorable perception and usage of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in countries with less developed socio-economic profiles, and less favorable perceptions and usage in countries with more developed socio-economic profiles. There is more favorable perception and usage of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in countries with aggregate lower generalized trust and lower democratic tendencies, and less favorable perceptions and usage in countries with aggregate higher generalized trust and higher democratic tendencies. Overall, the findings show the extent to which trends in usage and perception of the emergent currencies of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are associated with basic cultural and attitudinal tendencies that are not necessarily related to public policy or other typical monetary theory-based controls. I conclude that a matrix of trust and control is effective at demonstrating how sociological factors explain the landscape of historical, extant, and emergent currency systems and this matrix predicts where Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies situate in society relative to these other currency systems.

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Social Equity and Public Administration

Social Equity (SE) in Public Administration (PA) has a nearly 50 year history and recently has be... more Social Equity (SE) in Public Administration (PA) has a nearly 50 year history and recently has become an accepted pillar of PA. While there are no shortage of texts and articles on the merits and debated contents of SE theory, there is a gap in the literature for consideration of its entire history and an examination of early motivations and resistance to its founder's -H. George Frederickson -efforts to react to the growing social influences in U.S. culture and the shortcomings of PA theory. This paper reviews SE from its early formation by Frederickson though the matriculation of a protégé of Frederickson's, Susan T. Gooden, to the role of ASPA president. By examining the course of the effort to establish SE as a pillar of PA, SE is considered as a policy development and standard public policy matrices and theories are invoked to understand better the effectiveness of the actors and agents who have pushed for SE to be on the PA 'agenda' for so long.

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Cryptocurrency Public Policy Analysis

Cryptocurrency – including a particular initial denomination known as Bitcoins – has received sin... more Cryptocurrency – including a particular initial denomination known as Bitcoins – has received since 2009 wide and growing publicity in technology, finance, U.S. and international law enforcement, as well as general public journalism and popular press. This recent popular press coverage of cryptocurrency (how and from where do Bitcoins originate?, how much is one worth today or tomorrow?, will it last with all the stumbling implementation and technical intricacies?, purchasing illegal drugs and guns with Bitcoins!) overshadows cryptocurrency’s applicability to financial and currency system theories which have been developed and predicted for decades or
more: the fundamental theory of currency; currency denationalization; a return to an international standard monetary unit (before nationalized fiat); the inefficiency of costly 3rd-party-trust currency models; and global concerns about currency hegemonies as well as political influence of monetary policy, and currency hedge/speculation.

As the moral panic of Bitcoin and similar initial implementations of cryptocurrency fade and cryptocurrency systems gain traction underground or aboveground anywhere in the world, U.S. and international public policymakers and regulators will need to surveil, understand, and evolve public policy to accommodate any aspect of cryptocurrency which develops from technical novelty to realization of predicted grand monetary theories. Some of those areas of evolution include: national central bank monetary control; public sector dependence (oversight, taxing, fees) on private sector financial models and structures; and viability of traditional national and
international law enforcement techniques.

U.S. federal and major subnational public sector policymakers and regulators must remain vigilant for and educated about cryptocurrency usage whether in nationalized or denationalized use cases or they risk missing early opportunities to shape the rapidly changing landscape of digital financial systems in the U.S and abroad. This vigilance and awareness could be in the form of continued congressional hearings and regulatory surveillance. But a more proactive approach including federal grants for research and study of cryptocurrency, promotion of national and international symposia regarding currency technology and implications should be pursued. The nature of cryptocurrency’s raison d'être and early-adopter motivation foretells a disruptive network-effect adoption despite entrenched interests’ efforts at preclusion similar to numerous recent technical innovations in the private sector like music or other intellectual property downloads, retail shopping, taxis services, hotel lodging, traditional print journalism, and traditional communication systems.

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Currency Systems are Political Pornography

Centralized Currency Systems are Political Pornography " everything has been figured out, except ... more Centralized Currency Systems are Political Pornography " everything has been figured out, except how to live " Jean-Paul Sartre Modern currency systems have been taken for granted while growth economics have been privileged and prevailed or almost 100 years – currency systems are treated indifferently as if they don't matter. But modern currency systems have their roots in sovereign political needs which has compelled their use for day-today trade and market activities to be viable for sovereign purposes. The unintended consequence has been to require fractions (national currency units) of geopolitical struggles be used in day-today activities by global citizens each in their respective countries. This was not so much the case for time immemorial specie currencies but it is very much the case with contemporary fiat national currencies. It has been inevitable then that national currencies devolved into basic reward systems for individuals which connote political power as fractions of the national sovereignty. It's not just about 'buying nativism' (Buy American!) is it much deeper and more pernicious. It is currency nativism. These national currency systems are thus used for the purposes of individual and collective market trade under the mirage of fractional sovereign political power (or lack thereof) because it is necessary to strengthen the sovereign political arsenal – citizens have to use their country's money for the country to have political power (this applies to supra-national currencies as well). Thus there has become an unintended 'politics by another means' (apologies to von Clausewitz) accessible to the private sector in a tantalizing form. It is not surprising then that pro-growth initiatives which certainly have their roots in 'beating communism,' have become like candy to society and individuals. National currency systems are the ultimate in politics – effortlessly created and sold to the masses to satisfy material and temporal needs under a delusion of national pride. This is political pornography. Despite the lessons of and new theory subsequent to the Great Depression, there have been numerous central banking and currency system failures over the last several decades. The Great Recession is still visible in the rearview mirror without yet sufficient distance to fully understand in context of the wider trends of globalization and societal maturation. But even before history puts The Great Recession in perspective, there is ample evidence that modern sovereign currency systems are not greasing a flawless system. The ebb and flow of " animal spirits " enchanted by the 'attractiveness' of current forms of money – or what it can get – will not soon smooth (or sooth) no matter how much Keynesian stimulus is available. The depths of the Great Recession and Quantitative Easing which propped the valuations of monetary systems 'up' are well beyond Lord Keynes General Theory anyway (Palley, 2011). Modern currency systems themselves are just beginning to be considered – if only by heterodox economists, but increasingly mainstream in subtle ways – as inherently flawed as currently structured to effectively sustain the human condition into the future. Centralized currency systems which are ostensibly 'backed' by GDP cannot continue to be left to merely appeal to the users thereof based on cheap and easy gratification whether individually in the pursuit of money or by geopolitical institutions to commit 'diplomacy by another means.' The prevailing economic dialogs incorrectly consider currency as a natural outgrowth of society and civilization – if they consider it at all. However, there is little organic basis for currencies' (particularly typical modern) 'natural' existence at any point in civilization and a

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