Can cryptocurrencies overtake the fiat money

Abstract

Since the awakening of Bitcoin, the terms 'blockchain', 'cryptocurrencies' have become the buzz words. Cryptocurrencies were thought to be very promising and boomed feverously in the hope that it might be capable of replacing the traditional currency. On this background, the paper has following objectives: 1) to compare the fiat money with cryptocurrency; 2) to study the potential of cryptocurrency of being capable of replacing the fiat money; 3) to propose the framework to evaluate the sustainability of the possible candidates to be the dominating currency. The researchers have applied the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to derive ratio scales from paired comparisons and rated the expected performances for two alternatives. Nine factors were selected with the hierarchical structure to measure the relative performance of proposed candidates. The results found that fiat money is still preferred to cryptocurrency due to many reasons.