The decade-long cryptocurrencies and the blockchain rollercoaster: Mapping the intellectual structure and charting future directions

Abstract Recent advances in science mapping allowed to analyze the entire intellectual structure of blockchain and cryptocurrencies in business-related disciplines to identify 174 academic articles as well as 1482 practitioner-oriented articles published since the inception of cryptocurrencies in 2008 to highlight key trends of the published outputs. The results demonstrate academic research done by 389 authors in 296 organizations based in 50 countries that only just initiated the conversation on four major streams of the literature—Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies; blockchain adoption; cryptocurrency and blockchain environment; and business model innovations. When comparing academic scholarship to practitioner-oriented literature, the results demonstrate that practitioners discussed investor-related themes, cryptocurrency intrinsic value, political-economic sphere, and the impact of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies on the wider society in greater detail. As a result, a number of themes are identified and discussed that could align academic and practitioner interests and provide guidance for further research in this important field.

[1]  Victoria L. Lemieux,et al.  Trusting records: is Blockchain technology the answer? , 2016 .

[2]  Jon Carrick.  Bitcoin as a Complement to Emerging Market Currencies , 2016 .

[3]  William J. Luther.  Cryptocurrencies, Network Effects, and Switching Costs , 2016 .

[4]  Eric W. T. Ngai,et al.  Social media models, technologies, and applications: An academic review and case study , 2015, Ind. Manag. Data Syst..

[5]  Massimo Bartoletti,et al.  Financial Cryptography and Data Security , 2017, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[6]  Monika Bednarek,et al.  Evaluation in Media Discourse: Analysis of a Newspaper Corpus , 2006 .

[7]  Robert J. Kauffman,et al.  On the Fintech Revolution: Interpreting the Forces of Innovation, Disruption, and Transformation in Financial Services , 2017, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[8]  Slava M. Katz,et al.  Technical terminology: some linguistic properties and an algorithm for identification in text , 1995, Natural Language Engineering.

[9]  Morgen E. Peck,et al.  Blockchain world - Do you need a blockchain? This chart will tell you if the technology can solve your problem , 2017, IEEE Spectrum.

[10]  Daniel E. O'Leary,et al.  Configuring Blockchain Architectures for Transaction Information in Blockchain Consortiums: The Case of Accounting and Supply Chain Systems , 2017, Intell. Syst. Account. Finance Manag..

[11]  D. Tranfield,et al.  Towards a Methodology for Developing Evidence-Informed Management Knowledge by Means of Systematic Review , 2003 .

[12]  M. May.  Demokratiefähigkeit – Kompetenztheoretischer Ansatz und Kompetenzmodelle empirischer Studien im Vergleich , 2010 .

[13]  Chi Keung Marco Lau,et al.  Effects of the geopolitical risks on Bitcoin returns and volatility , 2019, Research in International Business and Finance.

[14]  Henry M. Kim,et al.  Towards an Ontology-Driven Blockchain Design for Supply Chain Provenance , 2016, Intell. Syst. Account. Finance Manag..

[15]  R H S Carpenter,et al.  Supplementary Eye Field: Keeping an Eye on Eye Movement , 2004, Current Biology.

[16]  Persistence in the Cryptocurrency Market , 2018 .

[17]  W. Nowiński,et al.  How Can Blockchain Technology Disrupt the Existing Business Models , 2017 .

[18]  Philip Grant,et al.  Through bubbles and crises: An analysis of the Journal of Financial Services Marketing from 2000 to 2012 , 2013 .

[19]  Sooyong Park,et al.  Where Is Current Research on Blockchain Technology?—A Systematic Review , 2016, PloS one.

[20]  Todd J. Barre.  Bitcoin: A Pedagogical Guide for the College Classroom , 2015 .

[21]  Albekov Adam Umarovich,et al.  Block Chain and Financial Controlling in the System of Technological Provision of Large Corporations , 2017 .

[22]  Ralf Wilden,et al.  A bibliometric review of open innovation: setting a research agenda , 2016 .

[23]  Ken Alabi,et al.  Digital blockchain networks appear to be following Metcalfe's Law , 2017, Electron. Commer. Res. Appl..

[24]  Jackie Johnson,et al.  Bitcoin research across disciplines , 2018, Inf. Soc..

[25]  Edwin Jacobs,et al.  Bitcoin : A Bit Too Far ? , 2011 .

[26]  Fefie Dotsika,et al.  Identifying potentially disruptive trends by means of keyword network analysis , 2017 .

[27]  Dhruv Grewal,et al.  The Evolution and Future of Retailing and Retailing Education , 2018 .

[28]  Jaap Gordijn,et al.  From chaining blocks to breaking even: A study on the profitability of bitcoin mining from 2012 to 2016 , 2018, Electron. Mark..

[29]  T. Andreassen,et al.  Business model innovation and value-creation: the triadic way , 2018, Journal of Service Management.

[30]  Andrea M. Rozario,et al.  Auditing with smart contracts , 2018 .

[31]  Jiann-Min Yang,et al.  Bibliometrics-based evaluation of the Blockchain research trend: 2008 – March 2017 , 2018, Technol. Anal. Strateg. Manag..

[32]  Alexandre Dolgui,et al.  The impact of digital technology and Industry 4.0 on the ripple effect and supply chain risk analytics , 2018, Int. J. Prod. Res..

[33]  Ivan Zupic,et al.  Bibliometric Methods in Management and Organization , 2014 .

[34]  G. Larios-Hernández.  Blockchain entrepreneurship opportunity in the practices of the unbanked , 2017 .

[35]  Jason Bennett Thatcher,et al.  Blockchain Technology in Business and Information Systems Research , 2017, Business & Information Systems Engineering.

[36]  E. Byington,et al.  Mapping Human Resource Management: Reviewing the field and charting future directions , 2017 .

[37]  Maria J Grant,et al.  A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. , 2009, Health information and libraries journal.

[38]  William J. Luther.  Bitcoin and the Future of Digital Payments , 2015 .

[39]  Jarunee Wonglimpiyarat,et al.  S-curve trajectories of electronic money innovations , 2016 .

[40]  Mike S. Schäfer,et al.  Media attention for climate change around the world: A comparative analysis of newspaper coverage in 27 countries , 2013 .

[41]  Benjamin M. Blau.  Price dynamics and speculative trading in bitcoin , 2017 .

[42]  S. Corbet,et al.  The influence of central bank monetary policy announcements on cryptocurrency return volatility , 2017 .

[43]  Mathias Weske,et al.  Blockchains for Business Process Management - Challenges and Opportunities , 2017, ACM Trans. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[44]  Ghassan O. Karame,et al.  Is Bitcoin a Decentralized Currency? , 2014, IEEE Security & Privacy.

[45]  Ludo Waltman,et al.  Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping , 2009, Scientometrics.

[46]  Aurelio Fernández Bariviera,et al.  A Bibliometric Analysis of Bitcoin Scientific Production , 2019, ArXiv.

[47]  Haroon Idrees,et al.  Calculating Web impact factor for university websites of Pakistan , 2015, Electron. Libr..

[48]  H. Horst,et al.  An ethnography of Bitcoin: Towards a future research agenda , 2016 .

[49]  William J. Luther,et al.  Is Bitcoin Intrinsically Worthless? , 2018 .

[50]  Alexander Ivanovitch Savelyev,et al.  Copyright in the Blockchain Era: Promises and Challenges , 2017, Comput. Law Secur. Rev..

[51]  Stavros Stavroyiannis,et al.  Value-at-Risk and related measures for the Bitcoin , 2018 .

[52]  Xin Li,et al.  The Technology and Economic Determinants of Cryptocurrency Exchange Rates: The Case of Bitcoin , 2014, Decis. Support Syst..

[53]  Mark Giancaspro,et al.  Is a 'smart contract' really a smart idea? Insights from a legal perspective , 2017, Comput. Law Secur. Rev..

[54]  Ludo Waltman,et al.  Visualizing Bibliometric Networks , 2014 .

[55]  KiHoon Hong,et al.  Bitcoin as an alternative investment vehicle , 2017, Inf. Technol. Manag..

[56]  Qing Bai,et al.  How Does Social Media Impact Bitcoin Value? A Test of the Silent Majority Hypothesis , 2018, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[57]  Faisal Nazir Zargar,et al.  Informational inefficiency of Bitcoin: A study based on high-frequency data , 2019, Research in International Business and Finance.

[58]  Priscilla Robinson,et al.  Literature reviews vs systematic reviews , 2015, Australian and New Zealand journal of public health.

[59]  Yifei Zhao,et al.  A Blockchain Model for Less Container Load Operations in China , 2018, Int. J. Inf. Syst. Supply Chain Manag..

[60]  Yan Chen,et al.  Blockchain Tokens and the Potential Democratization of Entrepreneurship and Innovation , 2017, Business Horizons.

[61]  Peter Yeoh.  Regulatory issues in blockchain technology , 2017 .

[62]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  Toward Blockchain-Based Accounting and Assurance , 2017, J. Inf. Syst..

[63]  Alan L. Porter,et al.  Research profiling: Improving the literature review , 2002, Scientometrics.

[64]  Voshmgir Shermin,et al.  Disrupting governance with blockchains and smart contracts , 2017 .

[65]  S. Hughes,et al.  Are These Game Changers? Developments in the Law Affecting Virtual Currencies, Prepaid Payroll Cards, Online Tribal Lending, and Payday Lenders , 2015 .

[66]  George Q. Huang,et al.  Toward open manufacturing: A cross-enterprises knowledge and services exchange framework based on blockchain and edge computing , 2017, Ind. Manag. Data Syst..

[67]  M. Marchesi,et al.  Using an artificial financial market for studying a cryptocurrency market , 2014, Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination.

[68]  Daniel G. Bachrach,et al.  The influence of management journals in the 1980s and 1990s , 2005 .

[69]  Danny Bradbury,et al.  The problem with Bitcoin , 2013 .

[70]  J. Tribe.  The truth about tourism , 2006 .

[71]  Sajad Rezaei,et al.  Job satisfaction and organizational commitment: An empirical investigation among ICT-SMEs. , 2016 .

[72]  A. Szafarz,et al.  Virtual currency, tangible return: Portfolio diversification with bitcoin , 2015 .

[73]  S. Wolfe,et al.  The Intraday Dynamics of Bitcoin , 2017, Research in International Business and Finance.

[74]  Glenn Parry,et al.  Blockchain for good , 2017 .

[75]  William J. Luther,et al.  Banning Bitcoin , 2017 .

[76]  Eric W. Burger,et al.  E-residency and blockchain , 2017, Comput. Law Secur. Rev..

[77]  M. Iansiti,et al.  The Truth about Blockchain , 2017 .

[78]  Marina Apaydin,et al.  A Multi-Dimensional Framework of Organizational Innovation: A Systematic Review of the Literature , 2010 .

[79]  Jarunee Wonglimpiyarat.  Technological Change of the Innovation Payment System , 2016 .

[80]  Prof Vikas Kumar,et al.  Exploring the rise of blockchain technology: Towards distributed collaborative organizations , 2017 .

[81]  Elizabeth S. Vieira,et al.  A comparison of Scopus and Web of Science for a typical university , 2009, Scientometrics.

[82]  Paolo Tasca,et al.  The evolution of the bitcoin economy , 2018 .

[83]  Cryptocurrencies as a Financial Asset: A Systematic Analysis , 2019 .

[84]  G. Giudici,et al.  Why Do Businesses Go Crypto? An Empirical Analysis of Initial Coin Offerings , 2018, Journal of Economics and Business.

[85]  James Angel,et al.  The Ethics of Payments: Paper, Plastic, or Bitcoin? , 2015 .

[86]  Ben Goertzel,et al.  The global brain and the emerging economy of abundance: Mutualism, open collaboration, exchange networks and the automated commons , 2017 .

[87]  George M. Giaglis,et al.  With a little help from the miners: distributed ledger technology and market disintermediation , 2018, Ind. Manag. Data Syst..

[88]  Florian Hawlitschek,et al.  The limits of trust-free systems: A literature review on blockchain technology and trust in the sharing economy , 2018, Electron. Commer. Res. Appl..

[89]  D. Yermack.  Is Bitcoin a Real Currency? An Economic Appraisal , 2013 .

[90]  Aleksander Berentsen,et al.  A Short Introduction to the World of Cryptocurrencies , 2018 .

[91]  A. V. Vlasov.  The Evolution of E-Money , 2017 .

[92]  N. Vovchenko,et al.  Electronic Currency: The Potential Risks to National Security and Methods to Minimize Them , 2017 .

[93]  Jarunee Wonglimpiyarat,et al.  The New Darwinism of the Payment System: Will Bitcoin Replace our Cash-based Society? , 2016 .

[94]  Niels Hackius,et al.  Blockchains für Produktion und Logistik , 2016 .

[95]  C. Cai.  Disruption of Financial Intermediation by Fintech: A Review on Crowdfunding and Blockchain , 2018, Accounting & Finance.

[96]  S. Ammous.  Economics beyond Financial Intermediation: Digital Currencies' Possibilities for Growth, Poverty Alleviation, and International Development , 2015 .

[97]  The Political Economy of Bitcoin , 2016 .

[98]  Vasilis Kostakis,et al.  Blockchain and Value Systems in the Sharing Economy: The Illustrative Case of Backfeed , 2017 .

[99]  Stephan Kornmesser,et al.  Theoretizität im Logischen Empirismus und im Strukturalismus – erläutert am Fallbeispiel des Neurobiologischen Konstruktivismus , 2008 .

[100]  Geoffrey Lightfoot,et al.  Price Fluctuations and the Use of Bitcoin: An Empirical Inquiry , 2015, Int. J. Electron. Commer..

[101]  Peter Seele,et al.  Cryptocurrencies and Business Ethics , 2018 .

[102]  M. Coret,et al.  Elasticity and symmetry of triangular lattice materials , 2017 .

[103]  Jaemin Jung.  How Magazines Covered Media Companies' Mergers: The Case of the Evolution of Time Inc. , 2000 .

[104]  M. McCombs.  Setting the Agenda: The Mass Media and Public Opinion , 2004 .