A study on adoption of bitcoin in Taiwan

Abstract

Since the global financial crisis in 2008 had caused the global economic depression, the public were commonly losing confidence in monetary system and international fund associations. Thus, the concept of untraditional currency exchange was developed. Nakamoto (2008) designed bitcoin, a decentralized digital currency which is launched and traded on the Internet. Bitcoin is being gradually accepted by the public, which is attributed to the feature of decentralization and anonymity. The exchange rate of bitcoin reached to the peak price at $4425.30 USD on August 16th, 2017. However, due to the concern of the security challenges such as being stolen, the public lost the confidence of bitcoin and had a conservative attitude toward bitcoin. It also shows that the relevant technical application and transaction model of bitcoin still need to be improved. This research attempted to investigate the key factors that prompt users to adopt bitcoin through a two-phase analysis. First, the literature and main social media data were reviewed to list out the key phrases. Second, OpView Social Listening Platform was adopted to collect data, and social network content mining method and the key phrases mentioned above were used to analyze the data from social media forum open to Taiwan. This explored the users' opinions and positive and negative emotional attitude about the latest bitcoin breaking news. This research is expected to provide references for the users when considering adopting bitcoin. It is expected to compare and analyze the data from other countries in the future.