The aim of the paper is to analyse the features of the digital labour connected with the so-called platform economy. Many platform-based business models rely on a new composition of capital capable of capturing personal information and transforming it into big data. Starting with the example of the Facebook business model, we explain the valorisation process at the core of platform capitalism, stressing the relevance of digital labour, to clarify the crucial distinction between labour and work. Our analysis differs from Fuchs and Sevignani’s thesis about digital work and digital labour and seems consistent with the idea that Facebook extracts a rent from the information produced by the free labour of its users.

The article aims to bring to light the limits and contradictions of cryptocurrencies, as well as to investigate possible alternative uses of them. Particularly focusing on Bitcoin, understood as a benchmark for the entire sector, the authors seek to answer the following questions: Should Bitcoin be considered a currency, an investment vehicle, or a speculative asset? On which factors does Bitcoin volatility depend? Do Central Banks effectively have no power to influence/stabilize Bitcoin volatility? Following the empirical strategy proposed by Baek and Elbeck, the article shows that Bitcoin returns merely depend on financial conventions and that the cryptocurrency is acting as a highly speculative asset. Sociotechnical innovations introduced by Bitcoin, the authors argue, have concretely opened the possibility of deeply rethinking money. However, several factors are currently negatively affecting the possibility of the cryptocurrency to function as an effective means of payment. Whether this experience can pave the way for the birth of new and more democratic monetary instruments, as the article discusses, is an issue that calls into question a whole combination of political, technical and social elements.

Various examples of complementary currencies have recently emerged in Europe in response to the impact of the 2007 financial crisis. They have been variously labelled as social, local and alternative money but their economic meaning has still to be discussed. On the one hand, they have been hailed as innovative tools for socio-territorial policies with a focus on localist, anti-globalist and anti-capitalist values. On the other, the emphasis on the value of currencies as instruments of alternative territorial development runs the risk of overshadowing issues concerning the specific features of such projects. The first part of this paper puts forward an interpretation of the current situation as a crisis of the liquidity principle and suggests that the principle of clearing instead represents the primary point of reference for any institutional arrangement aimed at restoring a balanced relationship between lenders and borrowers.