Research

Cryptocurrencies: overcoming barriers to trust and adoption

Year 2018
Author Dr Zeynep Gurguc and Prof William Knottenbelt
Publisher eToro
Link View Research Paper
Categories

Blockchain

Traditionally, money needed to fulfil three fundamental roles: a store of value, a medium of exchange and a unit of account. If Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies are to become the ‘new money’ and be successful in overcoming barriers there are several questions that need to
addressed:

• Does it need to fulfil all of the aforementioned roles?
• Has money and its definition evolved?
• Does money have to be ‘real’?

At the same time, we have to ask, what does this really mean for the everyday consumer? Conversation tends to focus on whether individuals
should invest in cryptocurrencies. But if cryptocurrencies are to fulfil their intended use case – and become a globally accepted form of money – we should also be asking when buying the weekly shop with them will be commonplace.

In this report, the authors take a look at what challenges cryptocurrencies face in overcoming barriers and whether the will achieve global mainstream adoption within the next decade.

Their findings lead them to argue that that technical and economic challenges such as scalability, privacy and volatility need to be overcome in parallel. Finally, distributed ledger technology businesses, cryptocurrencies and cryptoassets need to invest in design thinking as user-friendly design is at the core of any successfully adopted technology. Only then could we expect a continuation of the exponential growth of adoption seen in the technology’s early phases.

Download this report to find out more.