The next chapter of the human story is already taking shape courtesy of famous ground-breaking innovation of blockchain. Cryptocurrency has only been in existence for a decade, but the effects are already being felt, buoyed by the network effects of the Internet. Looking at the bigger picture, it is still early days and programmers are just beginning to understand the disruptive impact blockchain, cryptocurrency‘s underlying technology can bring to all aspects of the economy. With a focus on retail in a blockchain-powered economy, this paper seeks to unmask the enigma that is cryptocurrency with focus on Bitcoin, and why the current landscape does not even stand a chance in what the future has in store. Further, this essay will give this innovation context, by tracing the origins and evolution of money to our current platforms and infer on the next chapter of the financial system. The current technological revolution has been necessitated by the failure of previous financial models. For that reason, the paper will touch on some of the limitations of previous financial technologies. Innovation takes time to catch on, especially in a field as critical and sensitive as finance. There seems to be a valid reason to believe the Fourth Industrial Revolution
might be already in process. By being able to reduce operating costs and customized business models to meet the varying needs of modern businesses, systems in future might look very different. The primary methodological approach taken by this paper entails the testing of the null hypothesis that people will be using Cryptocurrencies to perform their day-to-day transaction in the near future. In conclusion, innovation occurs when you improve on existing mechanics, and runs deeper into creating a disruption enough to relegate the existing models because they utilize obsolete competitive patterns.
Keywords:
Cryptocurrencies, Retail Market, Blockchain, Bitcoin.
Table of Contents
Abstract 2
Chapter 1. 6
Introduction. 6
Background Information. 6
Research boundary. 6
Research Aims and Objectives: 7
Research Questions. 7
Structure of the dissertation. 7
Chapter 2. 9
Literature Review.. 9
History and the evolution of money. 9
Technology impact on fiat currencies (the rise of cashless transactions) 10
Flaws in fiat currency. 12
What is Bitcoin? How does it work?. 13
Closing the gap of fiat currencies. 13
How the use of Bitcoins will impact day-to-day transactions. 14
Diffusion Theory of Innovation and Relation to Bitcoin. 15
Defining Retail Market and its response to technological innovation. 15
Research data. 16
Summary of Key Findings. 16
Chapter 3. 18
Methodology. 18
Philosophical Stance. 18
Methodology Approach. 18
Data Collection. 20
Summary. 22
Chapter 4. 24
Results and Analysis of Findings. 24
The emergence of Bitcoin. 24
Cryptocurrency Exchanges (Coinbase and Localbitcoins) 25
Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) 27
Bitcoin: Asset store vs. Currency. 28
Bitcoin vs Credit Cards. 28
Bitcoin ATMs. 30
Cryptocurrency and Retail 31
Cryptocurrency payment processors: Bitpay. 31
Elementh. 34
Cybermiles. 34
Nucleus Vision. 34
Phore. 34
Tokenloyalty. 35
Chapter 5. 36
Conclusions and Recommendations. 36
Limitations of the study. 40
List of Figures
List of Figures. 5
Figure 1: Historical snapshot of coinmarketcap, April 28, 2013 (Baird 2018). 24
Figure 3: Number of Coinbase users (Stephen et al. 2017). 26
Figure 4: Localbitcoins global weekly trading volume (Stephen et al. 2017). 27
Figure 5: Initial coin offering proceeds raised in 2017 (Stephen et al. 2017). 28
Figure 6: Number of Bitcoin transactions (Bitpay 2018). 29
Figure 7: Number of Bitcoin ATM Installed Over Time (Sedgwick 2017). 30
Figure 8: Bitcoin ATMs by Continent (Stephen et al. 2017). 30
Figure 9: Comparison between Bitpay and other payment methods (Stephen et al. 2017). 32
E-commerce vs E-commerce blockchain platforms. 33
List of Tables
Table 1: Benefits of Cryptocurrencies over the current fiat systems 18
A Critical Analysis of the Impact of Cryptocurrencies in the Retail Market
Chapter 1
Introduction
Background Information
The mention of money and currency seem so intertwined one would be hard pressed to differentiate the two concepts. Everyone uses them in our daily lives, but it seems no one can quite wrap their heads around the mechanics of how money works. On this backdrop, Bitcoin is one of the timeliest and interesting innovations. Less than a decade old, Bitcoin has evoked hate and love in the almost equal measure. Simply put Bitcoin is described as a software (Carrick 2016, p.2321). To understand what Bitcoin is, it is necessary to zoom out and look into the underlying mechanics of our monetary system or the fiat system. Consumer education coupled with the adoption curve for new technology, it is understandable to allow new ideas some time to catch on before the end users are comfortable to change (Millman 2018). Bitcoin is the first successful cryptographic payment systems in a long line of historical failed attempts. Notably, Bitcoin is more than just a typical payment system as is demonstrated throughout this dissertation (McCook 2014, p.44).
Research boundary
This paper will track the evolution of money historically up to the emerging technology of cryptocurrency, define limiting factors and discuss both generally and with a particular attention to retail market, the potential that cryptocurrency holds for the future of retail market. The scope of retail covered includes the use of cryptocurrency as a payment option for services or commodities in e-commerce platforms and physical stores (Web 2018).
Research Aims and Objectives:
1. Discuss the necessity for the evolution of money and outline the benefits of cryptocurrency over the previous forms of currency.
2. Outline the impact that cryptocurrencies are going to have in the current retail market.
3. Breakdown some of the difficulties hampering adoption of cryptocurrencies in the day to day transactions.
Research Questions
1. What are the benefits of cryptocurrencies over the fiat currencies?
2. What is the impact of cryptocurrency on the retail market?
3. What are the challenges facing the integration of cryptocurrencies in the current day-to-day retail transactions?
Structure of the dissertation
The first chapter of the paper introduces the subject matter of the dissertation which is the impact of cryptocurrencies in the retail market, as well as stating the scope, goals, and significance of the study. The next chapter of the research goes on to provide some background information regarding the evolution of fiat currencies, their flaws, and how the rise of cryptocurrencies fills the gaps created by these previous systems in the retail market. Chapter 3 presents a methodological framework to address the research gaps and areas of interest identified in the literature review. The section also sets the stage for the next chapter whose primary focus is to justify the null hypotheses and other research methods identified in the methodology section. Detailed statistics from secondary sources of data will, therefore, be qualitatively analysed in this section to qualify all the presented arguments. The findings from chapter 4 will then be employed to draw conclusions, recommendations, as well as identifying possible shortfalls in the analysis.
Chapter 2
Literature Review
History and the evolution of money
Money represents the transfer of value that occurs between people and which is universally acceptable (Niggle 1990, p.445). During the Renaissance, the Medicis came up and established the first version of modern banks. Acting as third-party accountants, the Medicis, issued receipts for gold they stored in their reserves (Niggle 1990, p.450).
The invention of the printing press by Gutenberg contributed to the next chapter of financial technology. Around the 18th century, usage of paper money spread despite the usage of gold coins in other parts of the world concurrently. This created economic tension because the two were unrelated in value at the time even though they advanced trade. A disjointed financial system could not support international trade (Anon 2018).
The occurrence of World War I and II created the inflation problem the world has today. In order to fund the war, some countries began printing more money than they could back by the reserves they held in gold (Gump et al. 2018). To fix the growing issue, the Allies met in 1944 in what is famously known as the Bretton Woods Agreement, taking its name from the town it was held in, Bretton Woods (Gump et al. 2018).
There were some resolutions arrived at in this conference. Firstly, the primary takeaway was replacing gold with the US dollar. In short, the US dollar was the only currency that had to be backed by gold. The US dollar became the world’s reserve currency at a fixed exchange rate of $35 per ounce (Iwai 2013). All other currencies had a fixed exchange rate to the dollar. The last significant resolution of Bretton Woods was the creation of two organizations. These included the International Monetary Fund where all countries were required to contribute annually to the IMF, from which they could borrow should they face any domestic economic issues, and the World Bank (the United Nations treasury).
The Bretton Woods Agreement could only serve for a limited amount of time as the US depleted their gold reserves so rapidly and in 1971 President Richard Nixon had to put an end to the agreement because the US could not exchange their gold reserves for other country’s currencies. Since then, nations use floating current systems what is popularly known as forex today (Mainelli and Milne 2016, p.6).
Technology impact on fiat currencies (the rise of cashless transactions)
The technological innovation of the 1990s gave money the next huge innovation (Barber and Odean 2001, p.42). The internet enabled online operations and the creation of companies such as Mastercard, Paypal, and VISA (Barber and Odean 2001, p.45). Today, credit transactions remain the most dominant mode of payment on the internet. The internet established a network of banks, credit card companies and some intermediaries. Paypal is a famous example of an intermediary in the financial setup (Narayanan et al. 2016, p.60).
A setup of an online transaction goes like this. When one carries an online transaction, they send their card details to the intermediary, who approves of the deals and notifies the seller (Barber and Odean 2001, p.46). The intermediary will settle the balance with the seller at the end of the day. During the early days of the internet it was hazardous to give away personal details to a random seller online, hence the need for such intermediaries (Barber and Odean 2001, p.52). Such transactions also took a lot of time to proceed, or settle in the case of issues being raised.
In the mid-1990s, the innovation of the SET architecture was the first meaningful breakthrough that formed the precursor to the current online transactions (Narayanan et al. 2016, p.59). Customers did not have to register with the intermediary and they also never required to send their credit card information to the merchants. A shopping application encrypted the credit card information in a format that could only be decrypted by the intermediary. This way the buyer could send the encrypted credit data to the seller in a secure manner. The seller would then send it to the intermediary together with their view of the transaction details who will decrypt it and if the transaction details match, would approve the transaction. SET Protocol was developed by VISA and Mastercard in conjunction with some of the leading technology giants then. One of the companies that implemented SET was CyberCash (Narayanan et al. 2016, p.65). CyberCash faced some internal problems and finally went bankrupt in 2001. PayPal acquired the intellectual property. CyberCash failed because it required every player in the system to user certificate including merchants, processors, and even traders themselves. This was a hassle. Bitcoin cleverly weaves around this problem by overlooking real-life identities altogether (Badev and Chen 2014, p.21).
Cash transactions served some significant advantages including, anonymity (Narayanan et al. 2016, p.55). Once, transactions are done no records are kept. Also, the ability for a transaction to be conducted entirely without the involvement of a third party thus the transactions can be carried out offline. This thesis explores how cryptocurrency offers qualities that borrow on these two strengths of cash transactions through public addresses which create pseudo-anonymity (Narayanan et al. 2016, p.58)
Flaws in fiat currency
Almost all of the notable shortcomings of fiat currency stem from all the trust afforded to the central institutions. Fiat currency is inflationary, due to Central banks printing money in an unregulated manner. Fiat is non-inclusive, only a handful of people have the ability to create a bank and earn from transaction fees (Glaser 2017, p.7). Profits benefit a few people who in turn centralize power and control the society, setting up a vicious cycle that never ends.
Fiat currencies are associated with difficulty in liquidity since processing transactions requires communication and coordination between different organizations (Farell 2015, p.21). Other limitations for the current system include the extremely high transaction fees and difficulty in opening bank accounts, thus the high number of unbanked (Dodgson et al. 2015, p.330).
Financial disasters
Due to the bureaucratic nature of the current financial model, the whole system has to work correctly from the top down, with asymmetry in liability the higher the rank. The 2008 crisis was the tipping point of a sequence of events that can be traced back to the 1970s (Marian 2013, p.11). With globalization and the current interconnectivity of the world, the repercussions of the meltdown were quickly echoed globally. Casualties included the largest banks all over the world who had to be bailed out by government loans (Mikolajewicz-Wozniak and Scheibe 2015, p.372). The government is not spared, contributing to inflation through overprinting of native currencies. Bitcoin was timely released in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, as an alternative to our failed policies (Badev and Chen 2014, p.20).
What is Bitcoin? How does it work?
Bitcoin proposes a financial system relying not on human management and politics but on mathematics and code, run on blockchain (Farell 2015, p.21). Blockchain is open-source software, a distributed ledger, maintained by a network of computers called nodes (Carrick 2016, p.2331). For a transaction to be recorded on the blockchain, there should be the consensus of all nodes. Once registered, the records are immutable (Farell 2015, p.21). The records are open for anyone to see as well making it transparent. When a block is recorded on the blockchain, the node is rewarded with bitcoins. Nodes also receive transaction fees for all transactions on the Bitcoin network. Smart contracts are applications written on top of blockchains and they are the drivers of the other cryptocurrency projects (Farell 2015, p.21). Unlike a traditional contract which is carried out in the presence of third parties such as lawyers, a smart contract is hardcoded to run a particular way if certain conditions are met. This is the quality that will extend the application of cryptocurrencies beyond the financial world and into other spheres (Farell 2015, p.21).
The genesis block of the Bitcoin blockchain was mined in January 2009, with the clarion call "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of the second bailout for banks" the headlines of the day’s Times newspaper (Polasik et al. 2015, p.10). Mining of the genesis block means when the first transaction recorded on Bitcoin protocol took place.
Closing the gap of fiat currencies
Some of the benefits that cryptocurrency brings over the current system include but are not limited to these. Regarding universality, Bitcoin is not country-specific making it possible to be accepted wherever and whenever one is going (Glaser 2017, p.9). Because they are digital assets, one only needs to remember their passphrase, making it convenient to move. This also protects them from physical damage such as fire (Rysman 2009, p.50).
Cryptocurrencies are convenient and safe, can be accessed from a mobile phone or a computer anytime anywhere there is an internet connection (Dauda and Lee 2015, p.6). Unlike bank accounts which require a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy to open, it only takes a few minutes to open a bitcoin wallet. The wallet belongs to whoever owns the private keys making cryptocurrency censorship-resistant (Narayanan et al. 2016, p.78).
Transactions in the bitcoin network are settled immediately without the need for third parties like lawyers and have relatively low transaction fees (Badev and Chen 2014, p.21). Owners can send bitcoins amongst each other any time of the day, 24/7. Digital assets operate outside the banking sector, hence cannot be manipulated by banks and governments resulting in inflation.
Bitcoin will significantly reduce fraud because of its protocol architecture (Dauda and Lee 2015, p.12). Firstly, it is next to impossible to counterfeit a bitcoin. An adversary cannot also reverse a transaction because transactions work on push notification. A push notification mechanism works one-way whereby the holder can only send the amount they define. In contrast, credit cards work with pull mechanisms. The mechanism of a pull mechanism in a credit card payment is when the store extracts money from the credit card account. In fact, credit card fraud is one of the main limitations of credit card technology (Badev and Chen 2014, p.21).
How the use of Bitcoins will impact day-to-day transactions
There are astonishing capabilities of blockchain’s potential when integrated in traditional business structure. Run on a decentralized protocol, companies can be able to achieve minimized operational costs and also tailor their products to meet customers’ unique needs (Mikolajewicz-Wozniak and Scheibe 2015, p.367). Advantages of using blockchain include speeding up models and increased security and transparency. A competing business run entirely on blockchain will achieve a higher level of execution and accountability. A theoretical example might be a decentralized insurance company (Marian 2015, p.53).
Diffusion Theory of Innovation and Relation to Bitcoin
The Diffusion Theory of Innovation is an important standard for gauging the level of diffusion of new technology, culture or idea. The longer the duration of time since innovation, the greater the opportunity to spread. Bitcoin has been able to emerge from the ashes severally over its short lifetime, rebouncing even harder, with improvement of necessary infrastructure being constructed each day. The increase in agents of change; developers and media/social media influencers portend to a very bright future for blockchain technology. Despite blockchain creeping into mainstream media and education, a number of statistics show that blockchain is in the innovators phase most importantly only about 15 million Bitcoin addresses exist. Supportive legislation and the first projects to deliver a daily-used working product for cryptocurrencies will be the pioneers of ushering in cryptocurrency into the early adopters phase.
Defining Retail Market and its response to technological innovation
Retail is the sale of commodities to the consumer. Retail encompasses sale of all kinds of goods to the final consumer. The highly competitive nature necessitates the rapid adoption of innovation in order to stay ahead of the competition. The internet allowed retail business to be carried out in online transactions and use of credit and debit cards as payment (Barber and Odean 2001, p.52).
Research data
Regarding the research information, this paper looks to source the most up-to-date details, trends, statistics, and analysis on relevant fields from secondary sources. Some of the research areas that require research data include:
The history and impact of cryptocurrencies in general
The retail market
Technological innovations
The use of Bitcoins in day-to-day transactions
The blockchain concept
Considering that cryptocurrency is a rather new subject, this study will extensively rely on online information from recently published journals, online courses, and news media sites such as Bloomberg for secondary data.
Summary of Key Findings
In conclusion, blockchain offers an alternative to the current financial system. Competition impacts the current financial system in two broad ways (Badev and Chen 2014, p.21). When people make payments in crypto, banks lose transaction fees of the use of debit and credit cards. Secondly, less money in the banks from citizens forces banks borrow from other banks, to gain money from lending, which is less profitable. The result is less influence of governments and corporations in the economy (Dodgson et al. 2015, p.330). Due to the broad nature of the literature review section, this paper summarizes the information in table 1 below showing the major loopholes in the current monetary system that cryptocurrencies target to seal.
Cryptocurrencies
Fiat Currencies
Reduced transaction fees due to the elimination of third party accomplices (Wu, 2018).
High transaction fees associated with numerous third party participants especially domineering institutions like banks (Wu, 2018).
Universality and financial inclusive since it is accessible to anyone with an internet connection and is not country specific. Cryptocurrencies are globally acceptable (Rysman 2009, p.50).
Only benefit a few influential individuals, governments, and institutions. Fiat currencies are usually country-specific hence result in complex forex trading procedures (Rysman 2009, p.51).
They offer anonymity and consequently absolute privacy since only the account holder possesses the confidential key to the public address. The block chain system allows for smart contracts which do not require the presence of third party accomplices (Baird, 2018).
Fiat currencies require the disclosure of buyer-seller information which can be exploited by the intermediary party for commercial purposes. Involve third parties like lawyers to establish a contract (Baird, 2018).
Safe and convenient since it only takes a few minutes to open your bitcoin wallet at your convenience (Carrick 2016, p.2321). Bitcoins are particularly safe because of their protocol architecture and the fact that nobody can freeze your assets (Dauda and Lee 2015, p.6).
It takes a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy to open a bank account. Fiat currencies are exposed to the risk of fire, physical damages, and fraud (Dauda and Lee 2015, p.6).
Relies on mathematics and code hence not affected by politics, banking, government policies, or forces of inflation (Narayanan et al. 2016, p.61).
Highly susceptible to politics as governments can easily manipulate the fiat currencies of their particular states leading to a financial crisis (Narayanan et al. 2016, p.62).
Cryptocurrencies offer immediate liquidity since transactions happen in real-time without the involvement of third parties (Baird, 2018).
Difficulty in liquidity as it is time consuming to carry out transactions between different institutions (Baird, 2018).
The blockchain system enables the retail market to realize reduced operational costs, create tailor-made products to suit customer’s needs in a fast, transparent, accountable, and secure manner (Millman 2018). Customers are also allowed to choose the data that they want to commercialize (Pitti 2018).
Characterized by lack of transparency between transacting parties since buyers are not able to verify commodities or exercise confidentiality of their personal information. In turn the supply chain suffers corruption and lack of privacy due to surveillance and sale of consumer data (Pitti 2018).
Table 1: Benefits of Cryptocurrencies over the current fiat systems (Author 2018).
Chapter 3
Methodology
Philosophical Stance
This research utilizes a systematic qualitative approach of data collection and analysis using both secondary and primary sources of data. The primary methodological approach taken by this paper entails the testing of the null hypothesis that people will be using cryptocurrencies to perform their day-to-day transaction in the near future.
Methodology Approach
In order to break down the relatively broad topic of discussion, a top-down chronological history of financial technology is adopted. The introduction outlines the origin of trade and the invention of money necessitated by the shortcomings of barter trade. Later the paper follows as economy evolves with civilization, necessitating and solving the needs of new forms of money in the process. Here, the research tracks the discovery of gold and how it played a vital role as a medium of exchange evolving from gold bars to coins and now to bank reserves (Bitcoin Exchange Guide 2018). Human progress in technology picked up speed since the Renaissance resulting in ever-increasing shorter periods of financial inventions. The introduction of paper money, the establishment of gold standard, the appointment and reversal of the US dollar as the world reserve currency and the current forex rates varying from country to country. The fintech inventions in use today are enabled by the internet; credit and debit cards and now Bitcoin which improves on the architecture of the former. The era of Bitcoin has led to the emergence of projects adapting the impact of Bitcoin’s underlying technology, blockchain, on finance to other fields such as retail, data, democracy and supply chain.
To further the case for mainstream adoption, this research will also include the growth of the other building blocks of the ecosystem. The overall growth of the whole blockchain field portends a widespread acceptance of the technology, from the participants, to early adopters to the average Joe (Bitcoin Exchange Guide 2018). The ecosystem of the new cryptocurrency economy includes cryptocurrency market capitalizations, cryptocurrency exchanges and press sites such as Coindesk and Cointelegraph. Market capitalization of cryptocurrency is an important metric informing the valuation of these digital assets (Bitcoin Exchange Guide 2018).
Cryptocurrency exchanges are online websites where one can trade for cryptocurrency, similar to a traditional stock exchange (Bitcoin Exchange Guide 2018). There are a number of metrics regarding cryptocurrency exchanges that can be used to analyze their popularity such as number of users, number of exchanges and most importantly revenue earnings. Exchanges serve an important role, providing the platform for interaction and liquidity, much like the bank of the future. In the future centralized exchanges might reduce in popularity due to development of decentralized exchanges which are more secure, way cheaper and fulfill the blockchain vision through their peer-to-peer model powered by atomic swaps. Some famous cryptocurrency exchanges are MtGox, Coinbase, Binance, Poloniex, Bitfinex and Bittrex (Muscat 2018).
There has been rapid development of hardware component of cryptocurrencies from CPUs of common low-cost laptops to the GPUs of industry standard ASICS which are in use nowadays. Miners stand a better chance using more powerful GPUs which are able to process transactions faster. NVIDIA which manufactures GPUs for mining operations has also experienced a growth in value of its stock as it satisfies the huge new demand of GPUs for mining. The network effects of cryptocurrency are manifested in the emergence and increase in relevance of complementary companies such as NVIDIA and Bitmain.
Along this line, Bitcoin ATMs are important to the ecosystem because they smoothen entry into cryptocurrency investment for retail investors. There is no requirement for identification details and exchanging money or Bitcoin from ATMs is fast and quick, making it perfect for retail use for the average person (Muscat 2018).
Hardware wallet companies such as Ledger and Trezor have experienced exponential growth due to their rising popularity. Hardware wallets are a more secure way of storing cryptocurrencies, adding hardware encryption to the software encryption already in place. Hacking and loss of cryptocurrency is a common occurrence both for retail investors and exchanges (Bitcoin Exchange Guide 2018). With the rise in value of cryptocurrencies, it becomes important to protect them even more from the interest of hackers.
Increase in capital raised through Initial Coin Offerings (crowdfunding on blockchain) over the traditional venture capitalist financial route. The number of retail investors is rising as education is making more people aware of the financial opportunity open to them now through blockchain technology (Hugh et al. 2017). Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are very controversial, in terms of classification as financial assets. They are one of the key points targeted by regulation in new laws for this space (Hugh et al. 2017).
Data Collection
Since cryptocurrency is a very young field, most of the information informing this research is from online sources. In addition, there is an increased prevalence of cryptocurrency related courses created online courses and now being incorporated in computer science and business programs in established universities to meet the new demand (Hugh et al. 2017). Some of the universities that have already created such courses are Duke, Princeton, Stanford and UC Berkeley. The paper also determined that news media sites such as Coindesk and Cointelegraph are coming up by the day (Patrick 2017). Cryptocurrency is also making inroads in traditional media platforms being mentioned in Forbes and obtaining an exclusive segment in Bloomberg (Hugh et al. 2017).
Since there are a large number of cryptocurrencies active today, this study will stick to those relevant to our aims and objectives. Some of the ones that have been cited specifically in this paper include Bitcoin, tokenloyalty, Elastos, Nucleus Vision and Phore (Elastos Community 2018). There are plenty of other cryptocurrencies that are active in the retail sphere which will only be referenced. The sources of data can be broadly categorized into two: those originating from the company’s official website/publication, news websites such as Coindesk and Cointelegraph and the data from independent websites (Patrick 2017). Some of the most popular web sources in the final category include but are not limited to Coinmarketcap and Atlas. Coinmarketcap has been around since around 2013 as the reference website for following all crypto projects. These are very important to track the numbers associated with the industry as a whole (Yanofsky 2018).
This paper seeks to show how Bitcoin’s reach is increasing by the day. This paper will track cryptocurrency from being the subject of documentaries to movies, to segment in popular news outlets and even to part of the agenda in global economic forums. Social media is not left behind, around the close of last year, the number of tweets about Bitcoin sent per day were around 80000 (Sedgwick 2017). Increase in awareness inevitably leads to more consumer education. Research done by deVere Group revealed that Bitcoin is high on the list of investor preferences with 6 out of 10 comfortable in including Bitcoin in their portfolios. In addition to this, 7 out of 10 who currently own cryptocurrencies aim at holding cryptocurrency for the next year (Finance Monthly 2018).
Further solidifying the case for incorporation of blockchain technology is the integration of traditional companies with the new technology. Perhaps the most notable example is the photography company Kodak which experienced a short-lived revival around January when it announced plans of carrying out an ICO, leading to stocks rising by 89% alone (Matt 2018). Other huge corporations in the cryptocurrency sector that have seen notable gains over similar cryptocurrency moves include Longfin, Veltyco and Long Island Iced Tea Corp (Matt 2018).
The
