There are also purely technical elements to consider. For example, technological advancement in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin result in high up-front costs to miners in the form of specialized hardware and software.[254] Cryptocurrency transactions are normally irreversible after a number of blocks confirm the transaction. Additionally, cryptocurrency private keys can be permanently lost from local storage due to malware, data loss or the destruction of the physical media. This precludes the cryptocurrency from being spent, resulting in its effective removal from the markets.[255]
Main article: Ledger (journal)
In September 2015, the establishment of the peer-reviewed academic journal Ledger (ISSN 2379-5980) was announced. It covers studies of cryptocurrencies and related technologies, and is published by the University of Pittsburgh.[256]
The journal encourages authors to digitally sign a file hash of submitted papers, which will then be timestamped into the Bitcoin blockchain. Authors are also asked to include a personal Bitcoin address in the first page of their papers.[257][258]
A number of aid agencies have started accepting donations in cryptocurrencies, including UNICEF.[259] Christopher Fabian, principal adviser at UNICEF Innovation, said the children's fund would uphold donor protocols, meaning that people making donations online would have to pass checks before they were allowed to deposit funds.[260][261]
However, in 2021, there was a backlash against donations in Bitcoin because of the environmental emissions it caused. Some agencies stopped accepting Bitcoin and others turned to "greener" cryptocurrencies.[262] The U.S. arm of Greenpeace stopped accepting bitcoin donations after seven years. It said: "As the amount of energy needed to run Bitcoin became clearer, this policy became no longer tenable."[263]
In 2022, the Ukrainian government raised over US$10,000,000 worth of aid through cryptocurrency following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[264]
Bitcoin has been characterized as a speculative bubble by eight winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences: Paul Krugman,[265] Robert J. Shiller,[266] Joseph Stiglitz,[267] Richard Thaler,[268] James Heckman,[269] Thomas Sargent,[269] Angus Deaton,[269] and Oliver Hart;[269] and by central bank officials including Alan Greenspan,[270] Agustín Carstens,[271] Vítor Constâncio,[272] and Nout Wellink.[273]
The investors Warren Buffett and George Soros have respectively characterized it as a "mirage"[274] and a "bubble";[275] while the business executives Jack Ma and J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon have called it a "bubble"[276] and a "fraud",[277] respectively, although Jamie Dimon later said he regretted dubbing Bitcoin a fraud.[278] BlackRock CEO Laurence D. Fink called Bitcoin an "index of money laundering".[279]
In June 2022, Bill Gates said that cryptocurrencies are "100% based on greater fool theory".[280]
Legal scholars criticize the lack of regulation, which hinders conflict resolution when crypto assets are at the center of a legal dispute, for example a divorce or an inheritance. In Switzerland, jurists generally deny that cryptocurrencies are objects that fall under property law, as cryptocurrencies do not belong to any class of legally defined objects (Typenzwang, the legal numerus clausus). Therefore, it is debated whether anybody could even be sued for embezzlement of cryptocurrency if he/she had access to someone's wallet. However, in the law of obligations and contract law, any kind of object would be legally valid, but the object would have to be tied to an identified counterparty. However, as the more popular cryptocurrencies can be freely and quickly exchanged into legal tender, they are financial assets and have to be taxed and accounted for as such.[281]
In 2018, an increase in crypto-related suicides was noticed after the cryptocurrency market crashed in August. The situation was particularly critical in Korea as crypto traders were on "suicide watch". A cryptocurrency forum on Reddit even started providing suicide prevention support to affected investors.[282][283][284]
The May 2022 collapse of the Luna currency operated by Terra also led to reports of suicidal investors in crypto-related subreddits.