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https://bailbloc.thenewinquiry.com/
Bail Bloc
Medium: Cryptocurrency Mining Application / Rhetorical Software
Year: 2017-2023
Role: Creator & Developer
Context: Featured in The New Yorker, Vice, Wired, Fast Company, and major international press
Bail Bloc was a desktop application that bailed people out of jail by mining cryptocurrency. It operated as a distributed crypto mining operation, converting and donating 100% of proceeds to bail people out of pre-trial detention and pay bonds for immigrants detained by ICE. The project challenged the anti-human logic of the bail system while demonstrating how technology could be repurposed for social justice.
Details
- Created by Dark Inquiry collective for The New Inquiry.
- Contributors: Grayson Earle, Francis Tseng, Maya Binyam, Sam Lavigne, and Rachel Rosenfelt.
- The app mined Monero cryptocurrency using only 10-25% of users' computing power, pooling resources from participants worldwide to generate bail funds.
- Featured in major publications:
- The New Yorker: "Can a Social-Justice App Be Art?"
- Vice, Wired, Fast Company, The Guardian, Artforum, Art in America, Hyperallergic, and international press.
- The project served as both a functioning bail fund generator and a conceptual art piece—what the creators termed 'rhetorical software'—designed to critique the criminalization of poor people through the cash bail system.
Presenting Bail Bloc at the Ethereal Summit, 2018.
Discussing the intersection of cryptocurrency and social justice.