Title
What information propagates among the public when an initial coin offering (ICO) is initiated? A theory-driven approach
Abstract
Since the popularity of blockchain-based cryptocurrency investments has increased among the public, people have directly purchased cryptocurrency through the cryptocurrency market or joined initial coin offering (ICO) projects. This research explores what informational cues are captured before, during, and after ICO projects that can be considered as signals and a fulfillment of information asymmetry. We adopted two theoretical underpinnings to achieve our research goal - agency and signaling theory. Using information from Twitter, we selected the best-performing ICO project based on the highest return on investment (ROI). Then, we extracted 5,085 tweets related to the selected ICO project. Tweets are categorized by pre-ICO, during and post-ICO, by topic, and dispersion. Analyzing the tweets, we found multiple categories of informational cues for each ICO project. Implications and limitations are discussed.
Department(s)
Information Technology and Cybersecurity
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
1-1-2019
Recommended Citation
Shin, Soo Il, Joo Baek Kim, Dianne Hall, and Teresa Lang. "What Information Propagates among the Public when an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is Initiated? A theory-driven approach." In Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. 2019.
Journal Title
Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
