DEVELOPING SUSTAINABLE FINANCIAL TRADING MARKETS USING BLOCKCHAINS

Abstract: With the invention of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin in 2009, the world's first blockchain application was developed. While academic research gradually investigates blockchain more closely and attempts to understand its functioning in the financial sector, the technology is rapidly evolving, and eco-systems grow exponentially. Blockchains are now seen as an emerging field of digitization, possessing challenges to achieving sustainability. The research is still scattered and has not presented a common guideline for understanding what features of blockchains enable the development of financial trading markets sustainably. Therefore, the question remains: how do blockchains facilitate the development of sustainable financial trading markets and services? A qualitative and iterative study was conducted to summarize the priori concepts available in the literature into a conceptual framework consisting of four themes of sustainability and eleven categories of affordances to answer this question. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand what features of blockchains facilitate achieving these eleven categories of affordances and to test and modify the conceptual framework. The findings from the interviews confirmed seven categories summarized from literature to be creditable, while the rest of the affordances were left with a neutral view. Importantly, the findings reveal that these categories are highly interconnected, creating tensions between different themes of sustainability.