Max’s research looks into the ways that technology changes our relationship with money. As a TYDE postdoctoral researcher, he seeks to reimagine how we think about and teach financial literacy in the digital age.
His research primarily focuses on the social worlds of cryptocurrencies and their inherent tensions between self-interested profiteering and collective ideals; pleasurable participation and rife exploitation; and true belief and performative rationalization.
He’s currently developing a book titled Network Money: The Vernacular Economics of Cryptocurrencies, which details how participation in crypto publics shape peoples’ economic sensibilities.
Max is also a non-resident research fellow at University of Pittsburgh’s Communication Technology Research Lab (CTRL) investigating the nexus of cryptocurrencies and disordered information. He holds a PhD in Communication from the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.