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Cryptocurrencies Pestel Analysis

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The PESTEL analysis will be used to examine the cryptocurrencies in the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal aspects 1.1. Political segment, The policy of cryptocurrencies tends to be different across the world where the government can support or resist the implementation of cryptocurrencies (DeVries, 2016). For instance, the US government is likely to support cryptocurrencies by allowing those digital currencies to be used as local currencies (Hillard Heintze, 2014). In the UK, however, the government opposes by withdraw research grants in Bitcoin because of the stockpiling bitcoin (Chan et al., 2017). Although China is considered as the best place to mine bitcoin because of its cost efficiency, in 2013, …show more content…

1.3. Sociocultural segment Consumers tend to be comfortable with virtual transactions and they also prefer payments using electronic systems to cash. There is an increase of accessing personal information to online platform (DeVries, 2016). However, the awareness of customer is likely to be a limiting factor for cryptocurrency to adapt into monetary market. According to Consumer Cryptocurrency Survey, there is only 6% of participants “very” familiar with cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin (PwC 's Financial Services Institute, 2015). 1.4. Technological segment The dramatic development of blockchain technologies seems to be a double-edged sword. Although cryptocurrency leads to innovative payments and transfers, it may be a tool for criminal usages. In terms of benefits, bitcoins have ability to solve double-spending problems and Ethereum’s smart contract is used for sharing economy. On the other hand, because there is no legal which is responsible for Bitcoin trading activities, Bitcoin is considered as one of the greatest risk to national security through illegal operations involving to financing of terrorism and extremism (Vovchenko et al, 2017). In 2013, for example, the U.S government closed down the largest website, named Silk Road, involved to illegal goods trading, in which there is 1.5% of Bitcoin was used for trading illicit drugs and counterfeit

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