Abstract

Bitcoin is a social movement in the financial industry. It came into existence at a time when investors were looking for an alternative system for the traditional financial institutions. They wanted a system, which offers high transparency, low transaction fee, and high returns on their investment. Bitcoin is a decentralized system, which reveals all the transactions to the investors, providing a high degree of transparency. It operates without a centralized authority, so the transaction fee will be lower than the traditional financial institutions. The value of the Bitcoin can increase over a period and investors can expect high returns on their investment. As the market for the Bitcoin expanded, Bitcoin exchanges were formed, where investors can trade the fiat currencies for Bitcoins and vice versa. They became targets for the cyber criminals and lost bitcoins worth of millions of dollars in cyber-attacks, diminishing the value of Bitcoin. There is a lack of transparency in disclosing the details of the cyber-attacks to their customers by the exchanges. Bitcoin is failing to provide a solution for these issues and is operating like a traditional financial institution. In this paper, we will discuss how Bitcoin is a social movement using framing theory, examine various kinds of cyber-attacks that occurred on Bitcoin exchanges, their impact on Bitcoin, and make suggestions for the Bitcoin community to continue as a social movement in the financial industry.

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