An Overview and Analysis of Factors Driving Adoption
Informative Website as part of a master’s thesis at the TUM School of Management at the Chair of Strategy and Organization - by Prof. Dr. Isabell M. Welpe and Florian Knöchel
Content
Summary of the Contents
Building on the current research in the field of cryptocurrencies as payment, a qualitative analysis of existing cryptocurrencies was conducted through secondary data collection and three expert interviews to evaluate the factors of adoption in practice.
This work ranks cryptocurrencies according to various acceptance factors derived from existing literature and identifies the most suitable ones for payments.
In addition, the payment process and critical entities such as payment gateways are included in the analysis fostering a complete understanding of the adoption procedure.
The thesis highlights adoption factors that cryptocurrencies already satisfy and thus infers the aspects currently hindering adoption.
Furthermore, the current roadblocks are explained in detail, and a future outlook is given.
Concluding, this thesis suggests further research topics in the field of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment.
Need for Research & Main Research Question
The topic of cryptocurrency payments is not only of personal interest but is also a prevalent topic in today's news and scientific discussion.
El Salvador became the first country to allow bitcoin as legal tender, and according to Sabah (2020), 46 new venues start to accept cryptocurrencies weekly. On top of that, Elon Musk announced that Tesla is accepting 
BTC as an official payment in February 2021, only to retract the payment option three months later due to environmental concerns. Therefore, cryptocurrency payment has gained much traction in practice but has not received significant research attention yet (Al-Amri et al., 2019; Ante, 2020; Saiedi et al., 2021).
BTC was invented in 2009 by Nakamoto (2008) to establish a resilient and non-censorable electronic payment system but is currently more often used as a speculative investment. As Fama et al. (2019) said, several factors, such as transaction speed, at present are negatively affecting the possibility of BTC functioning as a suitable means of payment.
The factors for adoption are manifold and different papers have researched them, but an overview of all factors is scarce. Furthermore, most of the factors have not been analyzed regarding the suitable existing cryptocurrencies. Moreover, research on the functions of money suggests that cryptocurrencies cannot currently fulfill them completely (Ammous, 2018; Levulytė & Šapkauskienė, 2021; Peters et al., 2015).
Key Results
- Factors for adoption are manifold
- Volatility, Accepting Venues, Transaction Speed & Costs, Availability, Usability, and Knowledge are key factors
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Visa in all technical factors- Stablecoins are mostly tied to the US-Dollar and solve the volatility of cryptocurrencies
SOL ranks as the best payment cryptocurrency, while
USDT takes 1st place among stablecoins in the Cryptocurrency Ranking.
- Usability is compromised by a complex process and lack of understanding
- Knowledge about cryptocurrencies and the underlying technology needs to spread first
- Accepting Venues and Availability need to increase to enhance the network effect
Infographic with the most important Results
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