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Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform
Longlisted for the Financial Times Schroders Business Book of the Year Award 2023
BEST BOOK OF THE GQ, Los Angeles Times, Wired
The essential guide to this new landscape of NFTs, Web3, Crypto and DAOs and a warning of the political consequences of what happens when platform capitalism comes for the money in your pocket
Wherever you look, money is being re- placed by tokens. Digital platforms are issuing new kinds of money-like phone credit, shares, gift vouchers, game tokens, customer data—the list goes on. But what does it mean when online platforms become the new banks? What new types of control and discrimination emerge when money is tied to specific apps or actions, politics or identities?
Tokens opens up this new and expanding world. Exploring the history of extra- monetary economies, Rachel O’Dwyer shows that private and grassroots tokens have always haunted the real economy. But as the large tech platforms issue new money-like instruments, tokens are suddenly everywhere. Amazon’s Turk workers are getting paid in gift cards. Online streamers trade in wishlists. Foreign remittances are sent via phone credit. Bitcoin, gift cards, NFTs, customer data, and game tokens are the new money in an evolving economy. It is a development challenging the balance of power between online empires and the state. Tokens may offer a flexible even subversive route to compensation. But for the platforms them- selves they can be a means of amassing frightening new powers.
An essential read for anyone concerned with digital money, inequality, and the future of the economy.
BEST BOOK OF THE GQ, Los Angeles Times, Wired
The essential guide to this new landscape of NFTs, Web3, Crypto and DAOs and a warning of the political consequences of what happens when platform capitalism comes for the money in your pocket
Wherever you look, money is being re- placed by tokens. Digital platforms are issuing new kinds of money-like phone credit, shares, gift vouchers, game tokens, customer data—the list goes on. But what does it mean when online platforms become the new banks? What new types of control and discrimination emerge when money is tied to specific apps or actions, politics or identities?
Tokens opens up this new and expanding world. Exploring the history of extra- monetary economies, Rachel O’Dwyer shows that private and grassroots tokens have always haunted the real economy. But as the large tech platforms issue new money-like instruments, tokens are suddenly everywhere. Amazon’s Turk workers are getting paid in gift cards. Online streamers trade in wishlists. Foreign remittances are sent via phone credit. Bitcoin, gift cards, NFTs, customer data, and game tokens are the new money in an evolving economy. It is a development challenging the balance of power between online empires and the state. Tokens may offer a flexible even subversive route to compensation. But for the platforms them- selves they can be a means of amassing frightening new powers.
An essential read for anyone concerned with digital money, inequality, and the future of the economy.
336 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 3, 2023
24 people are currently reading
500 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 23, 2024
A good but not great survey text about a menagerie of tokens: crypto, NFTs, metaverse objects, money, gift cards, emotes, bits, and more, as well as the alternative economies that surround each of these. Tonally a little moralistic without venturing to take a real stance. Descriptive without making its own arguments. But fun.
December 17, 2023
O'Dwyer is skilled at explaining how bitcoin and other unregulated or not-yet-mainstream forms of currency are not really new, just different. Despite her going too deep under the hood a few times, she us great at pulling anecdotes from her life and history to give virtual currency a place in reality.
February 29, 2024
Loooooooved this (verso book club)
February 25, 2024
This is a confusing, mis match of stories organised in no discernible way that is extremely hard to read.
dnf
October 13, 2023To me, it read like 270 pages of a financial journalist’s blog. Since I regard block chain money as virtual tulips, that’s too much for me so I skipped to fhe last page and found: “The future was over before it had even begun.”
January 8, 2024
Really smart book on how people are trying to transform credit, debt, payments, identity, art and ultimately society with digital solutions, but often create more of the same. O'Dwyer discusses NFT's, the metaverse, distributed ledgers, blockchain, cryptocurrency, Web3, and basically every buzzword that's been doing the rounds in finance these past decades. She shows how crypto bros and digital artists often share similar ideals of decentralization, transparency, and efficiency, and as often fail to create sustainable or even desirable solutions. In the end, we're left wondering with the author whether we should be building anything on the blockchain or in the metaverse at all. Highly recommended for anyone interested in ethical solutions for payments, remuneration, and rewards - and wary of the bullshit narratives of finance startups.
August 31, 2025
Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform by Rachel O’Dwyer
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4/5)
Money isn’t just cash anymore,.it’s data, access, and sometimes even a “like.”
In Tokens, Rachel O’Dwyer explores how money is being reshaped in the digital age, moving beyond physical coins and bills into intangible systems of value. From platform currencies and in-game credits to airline miles, NFTs, and mobile payment apps, she reveals how tokens define what we can buy, who gets included or excluded, and how corporations shape our financial behavior. O’Dwyer doesn’t just track new forms of currency, she examines how power, inequality, and identity are coded into the very systems we use every day. The book is equal parts cultural analysis, economic critique, and futuristic roadmap, making the abstract concept of digital money startlingly tangible.
O’Dwyer blends sharp academic insight with approachable storytelling. While dense at times, her prose stays engaging, especially when she uses vivid real-world examples to anchor complex ideas. At its core, Tokens is about control and freedom. The book makes you question the “price of access” in a world where every swipe, click, and login feels like currency.
What sets this book apart is its ability to connect the dots between the mundane (gift cards, reward points) and the revolutionary (crypto, blockchain). O’Dwyer shows that tokens aren’t just financial tools, they’re cultural signals shaping our relationships and futures. A thoughtful, timely exploration. I only dock a star because some sections lean heavily theoretical, which may challenge casual readers.
Tokens is smart, provocative, and eye-opening. It leaves you reevaluating what you carry in your digital wallet and what you don’t. Perfect for readers interested in economics, tech, sociology, or anyone curious about how money is evolving in the platform era.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4/5)
Money isn’t just cash anymore,.it’s data, access, and sometimes even a “like.”
In Tokens, Rachel O’Dwyer explores how money is being reshaped in the digital age, moving beyond physical coins and bills into intangible systems of value. From platform currencies and in-game credits to airline miles, NFTs, and mobile payment apps, she reveals how tokens define what we can buy, who gets included or excluded, and how corporations shape our financial behavior. O’Dwyer doesn’t just track new forms of currency, she examines how power, inequality, and identity are coded into the very systems we use every day. The book is equal parts cultural analysis, economic critique, and futuristic roadmap, making the abstract concept of digital money startlingly tangible.
O’Dwyer blends sharp academic insight with approachable storytelling. While dense at times, her prose stays engaging, especially when she uses vivid real-world examples to anchor complex ideas. At its core, Tokens is about control and freedom. The book makes you question the “price of access” in a world where every swipe, click, and login feels like currency.
What sets this book apart is its ability to connect the dots between the mundane (gift cards, reward points) and the revolutionary (crypto, blockchain). O’Dwyer shows that tokens aren’t just financial tools, they’re cultural signals shaping our relationships and futures. A thoughtful, timely exploration. I only dock a star because some sections lean heavily theoretical, which may challenge casual readers.
Tokens is smart, provocative, and eye-opening. It leaves you reevaluating what you carry in your digital wallet and what you don’t. Perfect for readers interested in economics, tech, sociology, or anyone curious about how money is evolving in the platform era.
July 26, 2025
In this account, tokens are things that circulate alongside official money “as a way to meet a shortfall in official coinage, boost local economies, or as a means to pay wages or finance wars when there wasn’t enough real money available.” In other words, not quite money, but close to it.
O’Dwyer argues that this ‘not quite-ness’ creates the space for plausible deniability on the part of the people who make use of it. It allows Amazon, for example, to process payments without being a bank, or pay people control to work for it in gift tokens without taking on the obligations of being an employer. Facebook apparently issues a taken which has more clout than the US dollar. There’s the whole world of exchanges being generated by non-fungible tokens (NFTs) which can be used to lubricate the gambling industry which is bound by iron hoops to the internet world.
So, according to O’Dwyer’s list, a token can be a game, a passcode, a ticket, a social tie, a keepsake, a bribe, a secret message, a gift, a promise, a vote, an ownership stake, a joke, a meme, an art, a flex, a bet, a law, another token. Being not quite legal tender they have limited functionality. “They can be redeemed only for certain tings and by certain people, in certain places, or at certain times.” Nowadays they seem to slot in with an economy that requires to undertake ‘hustles’ alongside their ‘real jobs’ in order to pay the rent, utility and food bills. They foster the illusion that people have options in life that don’t tie them to traditional wage labour, even if that is still needed to secure base living standards. But the real gains seem to accrue to the agencies which have the means to issue the ‘scrip’ whichever folk lower down the scale have to scrabble for. In the space of a single generation tokens become a major part of the modes of exploitation and subordination which ensure the transfer of wealth from one, very large part of society to a much smaller group.
The book is made up of chapters which engage with the various dimensions of tokens and the role they play in the modern economy. Its utility in capturing data points across a population allows for the math which calculate credit worthiness which might include the social networks individuals engage with, the date apps they use, how many video games they purchase each month, as well as the standard interest in their income and assets. Tokens can be programmed to ensure that they can only be redeemed for a limited number of real world items, with the relevant example being the support cards given to asylum seekers which exclude the possibility of including tobacco, alcohol or scratch cards in their shopping baskets.
Libertarians are not unaware of threats which the digitisation of everything pose for the idea of freedom, but the anarcho-capitalist current sees the danger being present only in digital currencies controlled by the state, and not by corporations. In fact, the radical market solution is not to regulate who can create tokens and the conditions for their use, but to make everything a token – including the homes and furniture we possess, the clothes we wear, books and magazines and whatever else clutters up our lives but which has the potential to be transformed into a token which expresses our aggregate wealth and therefore the leverage we have to be ‘free’. In the world to come everything will be property attached to an owner, including the things which we now regard as intrinsically public assets, like roads, pavements, public parks and commercial high streets. Your tokenised wealth – sitting on a smart card in your purse or inside pocket – will be read by scanners embedded in lampposts or whatever as you move through space and time, with automatic deductions made to your store of assets as you go along.
The theme of the book is that tokens are enabling this entirely privatised world. It will add to the array of structures that allow the fortunate minority of high-added value people to extract rents from the rest of the population, no doubt allowing just enough rope for the productive middle and working classes to go about their daily lives, but placing severe restrictions on the bottom 10, 15, 20 or 30 percent on those who show up with a negative score. But there’s some consolation even for them, as the heading of one chapter explains – “when you live in a shithole, there's always the metaverse."
O’Dwyer argues that this ‘not quite-ness’ creates the space for plausible deniability on the part of the people who make use of it. It allows Amazon, for example, to process payments without being a bank, or pay people control to work for it in gift tokens without taking on the obligations of being an employer. Facebook apparently issues a taken which has more clout than the US dollar. There’s the whole world of exchanges being generated by non-fungible tokens (NFTs) which can be used to lubricate the gambling industry which is bound by iron hoops to the internet world.
So, according to O’Dwyer’s list, a token can be a game, a passcode, a ticket, a social tie, a keepsake, a bribe, a secret message, a gift, a promise, a vote, an ownership stake, a joke, a meme, an art, a flex, a bet, a law, another token. Being not quite legal tender they have limited functionality. “They can be redeemed only for certain tings and by certain people, in certain places, or at certain times.” Nowadays they seem to slot in with an economy that requires to undertake ‘hustles’ alongside their ‘real jobs’ in order to pay the rent, utility and food bills. They foster the illusion that people have options in life that don’t tie them to traditional wage labour, even if that is still needed to secure base living standards. But the real gains seem to accrue to the agencies which have the means to issue the ‘scrip’ whichever folk lower down the scale have to scrabble for. In the space of a single generation tokens become a major part of the modes of exploitation and subordination which ensure the transfer of wealth from one, very large part of society to a much smaller group.
The book is made up of chapters which engage with the various dimensions of tokens and the role they play in the modern economy. Its utility in capturing data points across a population allows for the math which calculate credit worthiness which might include the social networks individuals engage with, the date apps they use, how many video games they purchase each month, as well as the standard interest in their income and assets. Tokens can be programmed to ensure that they can only be redeemed for a limited number of real world items, with the relevant example being the support cards given to asylum seekers which exclude the possibility of including tobacco, alcohol or scratch cards in their shopping baskets.
Libertarians are not unaware of threats which the digitisation of everything pose for the idea of freedom, but the anarcho-capitalist current sees the danger being present only in digital currencies controlled by the state, and not by corporations. In fact, the radical market solution is not to regulate who can create tokens and the conditions for their use, but to make everything a token – including the homes and furniture we possess, the clothes we wear, books and magazines and whatever else clutters up our lives but which has the potential to be transformed into a token which expresses our aggregate wealth and therefore the leverage we have to be ‘free’. In the world to come everything will be property attached to an owner, including the things which we now regard as intrinsically public assets, like roads, pavements, public parks and commercial high streets. Your tokenised wealth – sitting on a smart card in your purse or inside pocket – will be read by scanners embedded in lampposts or whatever as you move through space and time, with automatic deductions made to your store of assets as you go along.
The theme of the book is that tokens are enabling this entirely privatised world. It will add to the array of structures that allow the fortunate minority of high-added value people to extract rents from the rest of the population, no doubt allowing just enough rope for the productive middle and working classes to go about their daily lives, but placing severe restrictions on the bottom 10, 15, 20 or 30 percent on those who show up with a negative score. But there’s some consolation even for them, as the heading of one chapter explains – “when you live in a shithole, there's always the metaverse."
April 18, 2024
Of minor interest: little bits of information probably gleaned from her postgraduate thesis, and cobbled together amidst some shallow snipes at successful entrepreneurs and people who have made money from hard work. Nothing new here.
April 5, 2024
One of those books that mostly "apply" theories.
April 18, 2024
I found this quite tedious, especially the insertion of moralising and virtue-signalling opinions that have nothing to do with the subject she deals with.
February 28, 2024
As someone with a humanities background I’ve been wanting to try and understand more about money and economics in general and saw this was nominated an FT. Wow. It blew me away. Gave me insights into how todays scams and finance connects to other moments in history but most of all it made me really think about the nature of value. Wwhat is money? How are things like Amazon bits or tokens on TikTok reshaping what we think of as money? Really well written. I flew through it lots of different topics written in a funny chatty style with mix of personal anecdotes, history and economics facts.
January 21, 2024
I was surprised at how much I actually enjoyed reading this book. For context, I hate anything related to online tokens: bitcoin, NFTs, and even in game transactions inspire, at best, a large eye roll from me. I am not one to spend time in large online spaces where these things are the lingua franca of monetary interaction. However, the book really explains every detail so it can build a shared connection between the digital tokens today and the historical tokens created through different points of history.
Now, that being said I think I would have preferred stronger connective tissue between the chapters. This reads more like a collection of several topics related to online tokens than a true thesis of what differentiates our lives from our ancestors under these tokens. I just enjoyed the topics so much that it didn't diminish the fun. Aside from potentially developing a new fear of Twitch, the book leaves you with a deep interest in what tokens collectively represent, and why, as humans, we always seem to come back to them.
Now, that being said I think I would have preferred stronger connective tissue between the chapters. This reads more like a collection of several topics related to online tokens than a true thesis of what differentiates our lives from our ancestors under these tokens. I just enjoyed the topics so much that it didn't diminish the fun. Aside from potentially developing a new fear of Twitch, the book leaves you with a deep interest in what tokens collectively represent, and why, as humans, we always seem to come back to them.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews