Analysis of barriers to investment and mining in cryptocurrency for traditional and tech-savvy investors: a fuzzy approach

Recently, cryptocurrencies have attracted a lot of interest. It is acquired and traded over the blockchain system and is believed to be the future money, upending the global financial system. However, investment and mining of cryptocurrencies are still in its infancy stage due to many hurdles. Cryptocurrency adoption (CA) is uneven across investors of diverse backgrounds because different factors drive cryptocurrency adoption in different ways. The study identifies nine barriers and forty-seven sub-barriers in CA through a literature review and other qualitative methods. The fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) is used for the initial screening of identified sub-barriers. Barriers related to sustainability issues have been filtered out in the initial screening. Further, the ranking of barriers and sub-barriers has been performed for tech expert investors as well as conventional investors by using the fuzzy analytical hierarchical process (F-AHP). Results of the study indicate that for traditional investors, risk is the most influential barrier whereas government regulation is the most critical barrier for tech-savvy investors. The study reveals that environmental concerns and awareness are the least important barriers for traditional and tech-savvy investors, respectively.