Emergence of Bitcoin as an Investment Alternative

Abstract

Bitcoin has witnessed immense popularity and growth since inception, but has been essentially ignored by the market due to its volatile and high speculative nature. Hence, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies constitute a highly dynamic but not fully understood field of research. This paper presents a systematic review of the research work conducted so far in the area of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. The literature has been searched and selected from the databases of Web of Science and ScienceDirect through the Boolean criteria. The systematic review highlights the major trends, directions and results available from the existing literature, leading us to present a roadmap of the future research agenda for researchers and policymakers.