Trust, Trustworthiness, and Trust-Free Technologies

Abstract

The technology underlying most cryptocurrencies, blockchain, is well known for enabling “trust-free” financial transactions and for transforming the role of trust in financial transactions (Nakamoto, 2008). Since blockchains typically depend on the cryptocurrencies they underlie to pay users for monitoring and updating them, I investigate whether cryptocurrencies are also trust free. Based on a classic conception of trust (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998), I define what it means for technologies to be trust dependent and trust free. I argue that blockchain is trust free, but that conventional currencies and cryptocurrencies are trust dependent. Then, I introduce a novel, probabilistic account of trustworthiness, adapted from Gambetta (1988b) to conform to Rousseau and colleagues’ (1998) account of trust and the research streams to which it has given rise. Based on this account, I argue that most conventional currencies are trustworthy but that most cryptocurrencies are untrustworthy. Finally, I investigate what my argument that most cryptocurrencies are untrustworthy entails regarding the question of whether cryptocurrencies are ethical. Drawing upon research regarding when cryptocurrencies are ethical and when a trustee’s trustworthiness demonstrates that the trustee is ethical, I argue that whether cryptocurrencies are ethical is independent of whether they are trustworthy.