Ingrid Becker2024-02-082024-02-082024https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/119429https://doi.org/10.22613/zfpp/11. 1.18Trustlessness and trust are considered essential categories that make Blockchain and digital technologies theoretically interesting beyond questions of the well-known Bitcoin application. However, it turns out to be difficult when we talk about the meaning of (non-)trust in Blockchain. Isn’t it often reliability rather than trustworthiness that matters to Bitcoin actors? Is trust in interpersonal relationships, which we experience concretely and often intuitively in everyday life, and which can be extended to institutions and professions, relevant to the rigid blockchain technology? And if so, how? Or will the necessity for trust – as the Bitcoin Whitepaper suggests at first glance – become redundant with Bitcoin? Should we speak of technology trust that is incompatible with the interpersonal trust paradigm, due to the immutability of what is stored in the blockchain, and thus would imply a profound shift in social realities? The attempt made here to actualize trust in contrast to reliance, both as philosophical concepts, in the blockchain context also means understanding technologies in their interconnectedness with socially interpreted realities (of trust).dejournal article