What blockhain developers and users expect from virtual currency regulations: A survey study

Abstract

Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (BC/DLT) are one of the hottest hype information technologies. Within BC/DLT regulatory development, virtual currency regulations have dominated both research and regulative work. At the same time, the impacts on virtual currency regulation on their developers and users have been investigated limitedly, especially empirically. This article fills this research gap. The present article reviews research on regulatory frameworks, approaches and regulations primarily within the European Union (EU) as the empirical data is collected within one EU member state. The virtual currency regulation use case of the country is also described. Survey data was collected from 40 virtual currency service developers and users with the help of three BC/DLT and fintech associations. The detected 27 regulatory expectations were rank-ordered with 164 pairwise comparisons by using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) based Wiki Survey method. The respondents indicated that increased clarity of taxation is their most important regulatory expectation followed by regulators’ understanding about the nature of distributed ledgers. This article contributes to research by consolidating findings on regulations, by empirically investigating developers’ and users’ regulatory expectations and by extending the use of the Wiki Survey to fintech and BC/DLT studies.

Keywords

Blockchain virtual currencies fintech regulations survey study Wiki Survey

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