The success of Bitcoin is remarkable from several perspectives. It was developed by one or more members of a non-institutional, non-financial marginal group at the very least related to the subculture of libertarian digital natives, which, in the public iconography, is usually associated with nerds, hackers, digital radicals and criminals. Even its designer was and has remained a total unknown to this day. The stated goal of the Bitcoin designers was to create a decentralized secure digital peer-to-peer trading platform. This goal did not respond to any broad popular public appeal existing at the time, nor did it respond to any dysfunction of existing digital trading systems. Given these facts, the tremendous and sustained success of Bitcoin and the hundreds of cryptocurrencies that have followed in its wake bears explaining.

The purpose of this paper is to take a holistic perspective in determining the factors that have led to its success. This paper outlines various approaches from behavioral economics (e.g., heuristics and framing effects) that can lead to a further understanding of how emotional, cognitive and social factors affect economic decision-making and information processing in the context of Bitcoin.

The paper centers on an empirical study that aims to investigate the different drivers of bitcoin usage behavior and the underlying psychological adoption factors. This study will be conducted to examine the key factors that make people purchase bitcoin and identify different usage behaviors of the cryptocurrency. Our results will not only contribute to a further understanding of the adoption process of bitcoin but also highlight different patterns of bitcoin use among people.