Alexa Esqueda
Postmodernist philosopher Jean Baudrillard believed our world makes way for mass communication and consumption to the point of Hyperreality–a state where our reality relies on being able to experience the things we lack through simulations. With consumption itself feeding off of consumers’ desires for more, the digitization of assets used to consume is a pivotal Hyperreality.
The increasing interest in cryptocurrency means consumers are after something that can be copied but not fulfilled by traditional mediums of exchange. Without the regulation of consumption habits that come from the physicality of making purchases, investment in the digital becomes more real than the tangible purchases that could be made. Crypto’s lack of centralized authority and freedom from bank intermediation transcends the asset’s value to personal agency, which a consumer can only experience in this simulation. This trade-off of a different reality makes crypto a dangerous avenue of hyper-consumption where real-life experiences and purchases become meaningless compared to how one can feel in the digital duplicate.
Eliminating the need for physical money leads to a need for something to take its place. Investing in cryptocurrency becomes consuming the more value that’s assigned and the less that’s left to what was once more real—thus, we enter a Hyperreality.
This Case Study is part of a larger essay, Simulation and Hyperreality.
