Vili Lehdonvirta is Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. He is the author of "Cloud Empires: How Digital Platforms Are Overtaking the State and How We Can Regain Control" (MIT Press, 2022) and "Virtual Economies: Design and Analysis" (MIT Press, 2014). We discuss the role of states in scaling markets, how states and platform companies differ, the impacts of smart contracts on governance issues, and how control and power are centralized within crypto markets, as well as the social implications of blockchain technology.