Tracking the digital evolution of entrepreneurial finance: The interplay between crowdfunding, blockchain technologies, cryptocurrencies, and initial coin offerings
2020 (English)In: IEEE transactions on engineering management, ISSN 0018-9391, E-ISSN 1558-0040, Vol. 67, no 4, p. 1099-1108Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
A vibrant development is currently taking place in entrepreneurial finance due to the field's digital evolution over recent years. This article aims to assess the interplay between four of the key phenomena that has fuelled this development, namely crowdfunding, blockchain technologies, cryptocurrencies, and initial coin offerings (ICOs). By making use of social media analytics, public discussions on social media concerning crowdfunding, blockchain technologies, cryptocurrencies, and ICOs have been systematically tracked in social media over three time periods between the May 6, 2017, and October 2, 2018. In doing so, a total of 197 770 captured posts across social media platforms have been collected and analyzed. The results illustrate that discussions on blockchain technologies dominated the interplay in the first analyzed time period, that discussions on cryptocurrencies and ICOs dominated the interplay in the second analyzed time period, while discussions concerning blockchain technologies, cryptocurrencies, and ICOs highly converge in the third time period. By illustrating this shift over the analyzed time periods and by offering a systematic exploration of key characteristics of the interplay at hand, this article adds to previous literature on entrepreneurial finance by providing an empirical contribution which details the coevolution of these phenomena in recent years.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2020. Vol. 67, no 4, p. 1099-1108
Keywords [en]
Blockchain, Social networking (online), Entrepreneurship, Investment, Technological innovation, Bitcoin, crowdfunding, cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings (ICOs), social media analytics (SMA)
National Category
Business Administration
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-50940DOI: 10.1109/TEM.2020.2984032ISI: 000579345600009Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85094108864OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hj-50940DiVA, id: diva2:1498970
2020-11-062020-11-062021-01-19Bibliographically approved