Evaluation of the Cryptocurrency Adoption Decision Using Hierarchical Decision Modeling (HDM)

In the recent years, there has been a massive attention toward cryptocurrency. The development of the blockchain technology has enabled the cryptocurrency to invade the financial industry by providing, to some extent, an alternative banking system with extra benefits such as lower cost of transaction, faster transaction processing, and higher level of privacy. Bitcoin is the first completely decentralized digital currency to exist in the cryptocurrency market. People have adopted cryptocurrency for several reasons. This adoption is a purchasing decision where the users make the adoption decision based on set of factors that matter to them. This paper aims at evaluating the factors impacting the cryptocurrency adoption decision. To do so, we have identified the factors that the users consider when making the purchasing decision based on a comprehensive review of recent literature and expert\u27s inputs. The objectives of the paper are to: (1) identify the factors impacting the adoption decision, (2) and determine the ranking of these factors based on the quantification of users\u27 judgments. This paper proposes a Hierarchical Decision Model (HDM) to understand the users\u27 decision to adopt cryptocurrency. The model suggests four main perspectives that influence the adoption decision namely: economic, technical, social, and personal. Every perspective consists of set of related criteria. We then used the pairwise comparison method to assess the importance of the perspectives and criteria to the overall objective of the model. The findings of this study suggest that users evaluate and make their decision mostly from economic and social perspectives. The top criteria found to influence the cryptocurrency adoption decision are the investment opportunity, subjective norms, businesses acceptance, privacy, and global attention. This paper provides insights into the factors impacting the adoption decision and their importance level. It also helps the cryptocurrency developers to understand the consumers\u27 adoption criteria to encourage cryptocurrency adoption

Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms in the Wnt and BMP Pathways and Colorectal Cancer Risk in a Spanish Cohort

BACKGROUND: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is considered a complex disease, and thus the majority of the genetic susceptibility is thought to lie in the form of low-penetrance variants following a polygenic model of inheritance. Candidate-gene studies have so far been one of the basic approaches taken to identify these susceptibility variants. The consistent involvement of some signaling routes in carcinogenesis provided support for pathway-based studies as a natural strategy to select genes that could potentially harbour new susceptibility loci. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We selected two main carcinogenesis-related pathways: Wnt and BMP, in order to screen the implicated genes for new risk variants. We then conducted a case-control association study in 933 CRC cases and 969 controls based on coding and regulatory SNPs. We also included rs4444235 and rs9929218, which did not fulfill our selection criteria but belonged to two genes in the BMP pathway and had consistently been linked to CRC in previous studies. Neither allelic, nor genotypic or haplotypic analyses showed any signs of association between the 37 screened variants and CRC risk. Adjustments for sex and age, and stratified analysis between sporadic and control groups did not yield any positive results either. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Despite the relevance of both pathways in the pathogenesis of the disease, and the fact that this is indeed the first study that considers these pathways as a candidate-gene selection approach, our study does not present any evidence of the presence of low-penetrance variants for the selected markers in any of the considered genes in our cohort