Investigating the Adoption Factors of Cryptocurrencies—A Case of Bitcoin: Empirical Evidence From China

The share of electronic transactions in the global payments continues to increase all around the globe. In the recent years, cryptocurrencies (also known as a system of electronic transaction) have caught significant attention from governments, policymakers, and practitioners worldwide. Cryptocurrencies as an innovative method of exchanges without any physical form boast several potential benefits such as speedy transactions, cross-border usage, low transaction fee, transparency, high security, anonymity, and privacy, and thus are expected to bring huge revolution in the future economic system. This study aims to investigate the adoption factors of Bitcoin, a most known cryptocurrency in China. Based on Technology Acceptance Model, a research framework has been developed to test the proposed hypotheses. The data have been collected via a survey questionnaire from 385 Chinese respondents. The findings show that the perceived ease of use and the perceived usefulness have a positive relationship with the intention to use Bitcoin. The perceived usefulness mediates the relationship between the perceived ease of use and the intention to use Bitcoin. Furthermore, the results reveal that the transaction processing and the perceived ease of use have significant impacts on the perceived usefulness. However, the security and control shows an insignificant effect on the perceived usefulness. This study contributes to the growing literature of Bitcoin and offers valuable information to individual users (payees), fund managers (investors), and companies/businesses (receiving Bitcoin as a payment method). Research implications and limitations are also discussed.