Maximilian Brichta
Communication
Economy
Culture
About
How does technology change your relationship with money? Max Brichta's research asks how digital finance shapes how we relate to one another and the economy more broadly.
His dissertation From Memes to Money: The Vernacular Economics of Cryptocurrency tells two intertwining stories about how Bitcoin and other digital assets invite people to reimagine value in the networked era. It describes how everyday people find themselves in fervent communities of belief and how those communities produce and circulate alternative economic theories. It seeks to illuminate the tensions between playful participation and exploitation; self-interested profiteering and collective ideals; and true belief and performative rationalization in crypto networks.
Brichta is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Virginia working with the Thriving Youth in a Digital Environment (TYDE) initiative. He's also an incoming Research Fellow with Communication Technology Research Lab (CTRL) based out of the University of Pittsburgh. His current research seeks to understand how the economic lives of Gen Z are shaped by digital financial services. He holds a PhD in Communication from the University of Southern California.
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