Crypto Investors as political actors: A Discourse Analysis of Crypto-Investment Discussion Forums

The transaction volume of crypto-assets has grown exponentially, with market capitalization surpassing US$2.8 trillion in November 2021. While much scholarly attention has focused on the economic and institutional dimensions of crypto investment—such as its challenges to traditional finance, extreme volatility, threats to financial stability, implications for wealth destruction among retail investors, legitimacy as “money,” and links to tax avoidance and criminality—less is known about the political motivations underlying crypto retail investing. Despite media portrayals of crypto investors as a “boys’ club,” libertarians, or even neo-fascists, few studies have examined how these investors construct their political identities and ideologies. This paper addresses this gap by investigating how crypto investors, who simultaneously critique and engage deeply with financial markets, perceive themselves as financial subjects. Do their discourses reflect the populist or individualistic ideologies frequently ascribed to them? Using a mixed-methods approach, I analyze posts and comments from the r/CryptoCurrency forum (2023–2024), combining topic modeling with qualitative analysis of recurring tropes related to identity, conflict, and politics. The findings reveal that this forum constructs a distinctive, gendered identity for a crypto-community, elevating specific forms of financial knowledge as authoritative while positioning redditors in opposition to perceived financial and governmental elites. These narratives underscore the pervasive influence of finance on everyday life and highlight how populist conspiracy theories shape popular representations of financial markets.