Abstract/Summary

Despite the impressive adoption of cryptocurrencies since Bitcoin was introduced in 2008, little academic attention has been paid to the role of interpersonal trust in fostering this adoption. In this paper, we quantify the effect of interpersonal trust on the interest in and adoption of the three largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization – Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin using data from the 7th wave of the World Values Survey, Twitter, and Google Trends. Our results indicate a positive and statistically significant effect of trust on interest in and adoption of cryptocurrencies, confirming the importance of trust in the growth of financial markets.