THE IMPACT OF INCREASING CRYPTOCURRENCY POPULARITY ON THE INVESTMENT HABITS OF POPULATION

Cryptocurrencies have been present for 12 years now and during this time they have often been covered with controversy. Although at first designed as a revolutionary, ungoverned medium of exchange, following 2008 financial crisis, they became more of an investment asset. Back then many experts predicted the collapse of the entire cryptocurrency market yet to this day values of crypto coins still rise and technology behind them evolves. This paper describes in detail the mainstream cryptocurrencies as well as some alternatives and the cryptocurrency market itself. Technology and application of blockchain, which is the backbone of every cryptocurrency, is also described in detail. Cyber security of cryptocurrencies and how it is achieved will also be mentioned in this paper. For the purpose of this thesis, a survey was conducted and respondents gave their opinions on their knowledge about this topic, future worth of cryptocurrencies and their investment habits towards cryptocurrencies. The obtained results were analyzed and presented in graphs. The conclusion that the research gives us is that a high number of private investors entered the markets hoping for easy profits, without any fundamental research, due to increased amount of speculative information coming from all kinds of sources