Digital Assets: Emerging Opportunities and Challenges

As more people and organisations acknowledge the potential advantages and opportunities of digital assets, their use is increasing. Digital assets are gaining popularity due to increasing interest in blockchain technology, which is characterised as decentralised, efficient, and safe, and offers a transparent and immutable record of transactions. The introduction of new clearing techniques, including central bank digital currencies, is expected to increase the credibility and stability of the digital assets market, so attracting more participants. In the cryptocurrency field, the Bitcoin halving represented a noteworthy and an increasingly expected event, its effects being the halving of the reward for new bitcoin mining, the admittance of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US and the initiation of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs in Hong Kong standing as happenings which are able to shape the global trust in cryptocurrencies, in their capacity as exchange and value storage instruments. Despite these matters, there is no harmonisation at worldwide level regarding the jurisdictional landscape, and the utilisation of digital assets is, at times, slowed down or propelled by the regulatory structures. In addition, regulatory and surveillance systems have been launched by some jurisdictions, for example MiCA in the European Union, whereas other jurisdictions conduct fewer steps in this sense. The research aims to assess the manner in which market capitalisation is shaped by funds’ inflow coming from private and institutional investors in the novel Bitcoin ETFs at the US scale and how consumer behaviour is altered by these market participants.