Cryptocurrency research: Bibliometric review and content analysis

Abstract

The present study systematically reviews the cryptocurrency and financial assets literature using a three-step methodology: The data collected from the SCOPUS database applied inclusion and exclusion criteria to identify a relevant sample of 1938 articles from 2008 to 2024. The quality control criteria are based on the Australian Business Dean Council (ABDC) and Chartered Association of Business Schools (ABS) journal ranking lists. 1013 research papers were finally analyzed to recognize the most influential authors, frequently published authors, most relevant countries and institutions, most influential journals, articles, and citation trends. We have used VosViewer and Biblioshiny tools to conduct the bibliometric and network analysis. We contribute to the literature by recognizing the most prolific cryptocurrency researchers: Elie Bouri, Brian Lucey, Shaen Corbet, and David Roubaud. Finance Research Letters is the most influential journal in terms of citations and publications. Dublin City University in Ireland is the most productive institution in terms of citations, and China is the leading country in terms of the number of articles published in cryptocurrency research. The network coupling analysis results indicate that the emerging themes in cryptocurrency research are energy use, energy consumption, and sustainable development. Additionally, we performed a detailed content analysis to explore the current position of the research using the Meredith et al. (1989) framework. The outcome of our content analysis indicates that 88% of the study has been conducted using the artificial model. Further, it highlighted that mainstream researchers followed axiomatic and interpretive epistemological assumptions. Our results also suggest that behavioral theories, especially the adaptive market hypothesis, are widely used in cryptocurrency research, followed by financial, economic, and operational theories. Our findings provide new insights for future researchers to explore new paradigms, such as experimental research or event studies in cryptocurrency research.