The struggle to become money: Bitcoin and the REC

This paper considers a highly peculiar monetary development in contemporary capitalism, namely, money taking a concrete form but without having an adequate social substance, and moreover, the required substance failing to take a concrete form into money. By comparing Bitcoin and the REC, a politically committed local currency introduced in Barcelona, it asks how monetary forms emerge, stabilize, or dissolve under capitalist conditions. It also asks whether emancipatory alternatives to regular money can succeed without replicating the alienated logic of value projection. The key question it poses is: why did the REC fail to achieve scale, while Bitcoin—a project rooted in anarchocapitalist ideology—achieved global traction? The answer requires a framework grounded in Marxist political economy, focused on the directionality of value projection, institutional memory, and habit formation. The REC relied on planning and participatory governance but lacked the structural solidity that could lead to sustained user convergence. Bitcoin installed itself through protocol, ideology, speculation, and repetition, thus acquiring monetary status through practice rather than conscious deliberation. The contrast makes clear the limits of radical monetary alternatives, and the strategic conditions required for their transformation.