Crypto-hesitancy: is regulation the answer?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore and address the possible reasons for the hesitancy in accepting cryptocurrency as an asset class by the world governments and central banks. The behaviour of delaying the acceptance or using cryptocurrency has been termed as crypto-hesitancy. Design/methodology/approach To establish the conceptual understanding of crypto-hesitancy, the bibliometric analysis was performed through Bibliometrix and VOSviewer. Through keyword search technique this study has located 507 useful studies in Scopus database, which were used for the bibliometric analysis. Findings The findings of the study reveal that the government of developed and developing nations and central banks hesitate to regulate and accept cryptocurrency due to the following reasons: cryptocurrency’s ties to illegal activity, speculation and cryptocurrency’s capacity to circumvent government-imposed capital controls. The findings of this study can be used as platform to develop the construct – crypto-hesitancy – further and explore the empirical insights of it. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the construct crypto-hesitancy has not been evolved yet, which makes this study the first attempt to theoretically understand the concept and its evolution.