Digital trade deals, monopolies and crypto: The new architecture of private control

by bilaterals.org & Sofia Scasserra¹

9 June 2026

Over the last decade, cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, the best-known example, and others in their various forms, have often been presented as neutral technological innovations: decentralised tools capable of liberating individuals from banks, governments, and financial intermediaries. Yet this narrative obscures the deeper political and ideological project embedded within the rise of crypto. Far from existing outside contemporary capitalism, cryptocurrencies emerge from a broader neoliberal trajectory aimed at privatising spheres of collective life that historically remained under public control.

Capitalism has long expanded through successive waves of privatisation. Natural resources once managed collectively became private property. Public services were transferred to corporate actors. More recently, the digital economy transformed personal data, social interactions and human behavior into profitable assets controlled by a handful of technology companies, like Meta, Alphabet and X. Cryptocurrencies represent the latest frontier in this process: the attempted privatisation of money. Although banks themselves were privatised, money — one of the most widely used social technologies in the world — largely remained tied to public authority and political sovereignty.

Privatisation's new frontier

The ideological foundations of crypto draw heavily from classical liberal and libertarian assumptions that markets function best with minimal state intervention. But history repeatedly demonstrates that markets naturally lead to concentration of power, inequality, and monopolisation. This tendency is not accidental, but reflects the structural nature of crypto and the conditions required for a feasible libertarian alternative to state-issued money. This dynamic becomes even clearer within contemporary digital capitalism. Over the last two decades, large technology corporations built unprecedented economic and political influence through the accumulation of data, algorithmic control, telecommunications infrastructure and digital platforms. The first major scandal arose from Meta’s involvement in influencing the elections in several countries through the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Governments largely failed to regulate these companies during the formative years of the internet economy, allowing a handful of firms to dominate communication, commerce, advertising, labour markets and information flows on a global scale.

At the center of this transformation lies the ideology of unrestricted digital flows. International trade agreements increasingly promote the free flow of data, prohibit data localisation requirements and restrict governments’ ability to regulate digital infrastructures. In the name of innovation and electronic commerce, these agreements reduce states’ capacity to tax technology corporations, control strategic digital resources, or establish forms of digital sovereignty. Data itself becomes treated as a global commodity detached from territorial regulation. This is essential to the consolidation of the large-scale digital monopolies that are increasingly shaping, and potentially dominating, financial markets. Data extractivism has become normalised on a massive scale through these digital corporations´ tools.

The parallels with cryptocurrencies are striking. Both data flows and crypto flows operate across borders while resisting traditional forms of public oversight. Both are presented as technologically inevitable and politically neutral. And both fit within a broader vision of deterritorialised digital capitalism in which economic activity escapes democratic regulation in favor of privately governed global systems.

• Read also: Resisting Big Tech empires (and their trade rules)

The contradiction at the heart of crypto becomes evident when examining how these systems actually function. Crypto ideology frequently celebrates decentralisation and the elimination of intermediaries. Yet technical decentralisation does not necessarily produce economic or political decentralisation. Ordinary users rarely interact directly with blockchain infrastructure. Instead, they depend on centralised exchanges, payment applications, wallet providers, stablecoin issuers, cloud hosting services and mining pools, such as Binance, Trezor, Exodus, and many more. In practice, public institutions are often replaced not by democratic participation, but by new private intermediaries.

Digital markets naturally generate concentration through network effects, economies of scale and user lock-in. Crypto ecosystems are no exception. Large exchanges attract liquidity, which attracts more users, which further increases concentration. The result resembles the same winner-take-all structures already visible in social media, e-commerce, and search engines. Despite the rhetoric of decentralisation, crypto markets increasingly reproduce the monopolistic dynamics associated with dominant platform corporations.

Trade deals and the digital power grab

This concentration is not accidental. Cryptocurrencies require large infrastructures and widespread social acceptance to function as meaningful currencies. They lack the institutional foundation and legitimacy created by states through taxation systems and public institutions. Their adoption therefore depends heavily on integration into large digital platforms, fintech ecosystems and transnational payment infrastructures. If integrated into dominant platform ecosystems, cryptocurrencies could further consolidate corporate power over economic life.

The issue is not simply financial. Whoever controls payment systems can shape participation in society itself: access to services, visibility in markets, labour opportunities and economic survival.

Modern digital trade agreements reinforce this trajectory. Contemporary trade frameworks increasingly limit states’ ability to regulate cross-border digital activities. Provisions promoting unrestricted data flows, limiting local infrastructure requirements, and constraining national digital regulation, facilitate the expansion of transnational platform corporations.

Cryptocurrencies fit naturally within this architecture because they weaken capital controls, complicate taxation, and reduce governments’ visibility over financial transactions.

The ideological convergence between digital free-trade policy, Silicon Valley platform ideology and crypto-libertarianism is difficult to ignore. All promote distrust toward public regulation, celebrate borderless markets, and frame technological systems as superior alternatives to democratic governance. Terms such as “innovation,” “internet freedom,” and “decentralisation” often function politically to legitimise deregulation while obscuring the concentration of private power occurring underneath.

Taken together, digital trade agreements, platform capitalism and cryptocurrencies form a mutually reinforcing structure. Trade agreements reduce national barriers to digital operations. Platforms accumulate data, infrastructure and market dominance. Cryptocurrencies potentially provide privatised systems of payment and value exchange operating within those same corporate ecosystems. The result could be a highly globalised digital economy governed less by democratic institutions than by transnational technology and financial actors.

These developments carry particular risks for countries in the Global South. States with weaker technological infrastructures may become increasingly dependent on foreign platforms, foreign cloud services, foreign payment ecosystems and externally controlled digital currencies. The combination of digital trade liberalisation and privately governed financial technologies risks deepening existing global asymmetries between dominant technology powers and more economically dependent states.

At the same time, cryptocurrencies may also facilitate the circumvention of capital controls, including in the financing of far-right political movements in countries with strict financial regulations. More broadly, the expansion of the crypto ecosystem is not only reshaping perceptions of the digital economy, but also transforming political and social relations by reinforcing financially concentrated forms of power within a male-dominated world, while weakening traditions of class-based politics and collective solidarity. This is exemplified in countries experiencing political and economic crises, such as Argentina or Venezuela, where the crypto world is at the heart of the political financing and campaigning, and where major scandals have taken place, including the Libra cryptocurrency scam involving President Javier Milei.

The illusion of the trustless system²

The central question therefore is not whether cryptocurrencies are technologically innovative. It is who ultimately controls the infrastructures of economic life. Weakening public authority over money does not automatically empower ordinary citizens. If corporations own the platforms, venture capital dominates ecosystems, and digital infrastructures remain concentrated in private hands, then power simply shifts from public institutions toward transnational digital capital.

The language of decentralisation can easily obscure this transfer of power. Democratic institutions are imperfect and often deeply compromised, but they remain, at least theoretically, accountable to citizens. Multinational digital corporations are accountable primarily to investors and shareholders. As digital trade agreements weaken regulatory sovereignty and cryptocurrencies challenge public monetary authority, societies risk losing collective control over core economic functions.

What is at stake is not merely financial regulation, but the future organisation of political and economic life in the digital age. Responding to these transformations requires stronger democratic oversight of cryptocurrencies, fintech systems, digital monopolies and data governance — alongside renewed public control over the infrastructures that increasingly shape contemporary society. Failing to examine the relationship between cryptocurrency and the broader digital ecosystem risks overlooking one of the central dynamics shaping this emerging order.

• To explore further: Cryptocurrencies: The final battle between the State and liberalism (in Spanish, original title: Criptomonedas: la batalla final entre el Estado y el liberalismo)