Emerging trends and performance measurement of cryptocurrency research during 2013–2022: a systematic review based on computational mapping

Abstract

Purpose The emergence of cryptocurrencies has tremendously changed the way of financial transactions around the world which has led to form distinct discussions in the field regarding its reliability. This paper aims to evaluate the published literatures on cryptocurrency identifying its growth, citation, prolific authors, journals, countries, active funding agencies, collaboration pattern and emerging research hotspots in the area. Design/methodology/approach Scientometrics and Altmetrics parameters have been incorporated in the study. Literatures covered from the Scopus database searching within “Article Title, Abstract, Keywords” with keywords “cryptocurrency” OR “digital currency” OR “bitcoin” OR “Ethereum” by limiting the time range of 2013–2022, English language and journal articles only. Total 6,107 documents have been identified. The further analysis and visualisation is performed using MSExcel, VOSviewer, Biblioshiny and Tableau. Another tool, Dimension.ai is used to identify the Altmetric Attention Score. Findings The findings reveal that the growth of research and citation rate hiked from the year 2017 till now. Elie Bouri is the top contributor, IEEE Access is the most prolific journal, China being the prolific country. Topics like Blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum, smart contracts, financial markets are emerging researched hotspots. The reliability of crypto market is still not clear because of its high volatility. The findings of the study will be more useful in the academia, subject specialists, research institutions, funding agencies, publishing agencies in decision-making. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no such study found considering both Scientometrics and Altmetrics approaches on cryptocurrency research with the selected time bound.