Ask ten people why they bought (or would buy) Bitcoin, and you’ll likely get ten different answers. Some talk about the thrill of a volatile market, others about missing out on friends’ gains, and still others about a genuine fascination with the technology behind it. With hundreds of millions of people now holding some form of cryptocurrency, the question of what actually drives that leap from curiosity to clicking “buy” has become more than an academic puzzle. A new paper in the Journal of Computer Information Systems takes a closer look at the psychological wiring behind those decisions.
The question behind the research
Most existing research on cryptocurrency has focused on the technology itself — how blockchains work, how transactions are secured, how markets behave. Comparatively little attention has been paid to the humans actually placing the bets. Yi-Shun Wang of National Changhua University of Education in Taiwan and colleagues wanted to understand how individual personality differences feed into two distinct kinds of motivation, and how those motivations translate into an intention to invest.
The framework they used comes from Self-Determination Theory, a well-known model in psychology that splits motivation into two flavors. Intrinsic motivation is the pull you feel when something is interesting or enjoyable in itself — the fun of learning how blockchain works, or the satisfaction of figuring out a market. Extrinsic motivation is the pull of external rewards — money, status, recognition, or keeping up with peers.
The researchers focused on three personality traits that might feed into those motivations. The first is locus of control, which describes whether people tend to believe their outcomes are shaped by their own actions (internal) or by luck and external forces (external). The second is self-efficacy, the confidence you have in your own ability to handle a task. The third is risk preference, essentially how comfortable someone is with taking chances for potential rewards.
How the study worked
The team ran a survey in November 2022 on PTT, a large Taiwanese online bulletin board known for a broad user base and wide-ranging discussions. To encourage genuine engagement, participants who submitted valid responses were entered to receive one of 100 electronic gift vouchers. After removing invalid or extreme responses, they were left with 305 usable questionnaires. Roughly a third of respondents already had experience investing in cryptocurrency; the rest did not.
Participants answered questions designed to score them on each of the three personality traits, plus their intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to invest in crypto, plus their behavioral intention (whether they plan to actually invest). The researchers then used a statistical technique called partial least squares structural equation modeling to test whether the traits predicted the motivations, and whether the motivations predicted intention.
What the analysis showed
Both types of motivation mattered for whether people intended to invest — but intrinsic motivation had roughly four times the effect of extrinsic motivation in the statistical model. In plain terms, people who found cryptocurrency genuinely interesting or enjoyable were far more likely to say they planned to invest than people who were mainly chasing the money.
Self-efficacy turned out to be a strong predictor of both motivations. Respondents who felt confident that they could learn about cryptocurrency, analyze investment costs, and find reliable information reported higher levels of both intrinsic curiosity and extrinsic reward-seeking. The authors suggest that confidence acts as a kind of on-ramp: believing you can handle the topic makes it more enjoyable to engage with, and also makes the potential payoffs feel more attainable.
Risk preference produced a more selective result. People with higher tolerance for risk were more extrinsically motivated — drawn by the prospect of big returns — but their risk appetite had no significant effect on intrinsic motivation. Enjoying the intellectual side of crypto, in other words, doesn’t seem to depend on whether you’re a gambler at heart.
The findings around locus of control produced the study’s most unexpected twist. The researchers had predicted that people with an internal locus of control (those who feel they steer their own outcomes) would show more intrinsic motivation, while those with an external locus (attributing outcomes to luck or circumstance) would lean toward extrinsic motivation. The extrinsic prediction held up: an external orientation was linked to being more motivated by external rewards. But the intrinsic side went the opposite direction from the hypothesis. People with a more external locus of control also showed slightly higher intrinsic motivation.
Wang and colleagues interpret this counterintuitive result through the lens of an older debate in motivation research. The traditional view holds that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations trade off against each other. But some researchers, including Teresa Amabile, have argued the two can rise together. The authors suggest that in the case of cryptocurrency, people may be swept up simultaneously by the appeal of external rewards and by genuine fascination with the market — the two feelings amplifying rather than canceling each other out.
What this could mean for investors and regulators
The researchers argue that the findings have practical uses beyond academic interest. For platforms and educators, the results suggest that building users’ confidence — through communities where investors share experiences, or through basic educational content — could shift both curiosity and reward-seeking in tandem. For people who lean toward an internal locus of control, the authors suggest that better information and awareness campaigns could help engage a group that might otherwise remain on the sidelines.
For high-risk-preference investors, the paper raises a caution flag. Because their motivation is dominated by external rewards, they may underweight the intrinsic side — the learning, patience, and understanding needed to weather volatility. The authors suggest that educational efforts aimed at this group should focus on balancing the lure of gains with a more grounded understanding of what they’re getting into.
Caveats worth keeping in mind
The study has some limits the authors are upfront about. The sample came entirely from one Taiwanese online forum during a single month, which means the findings may not generalize cleanly to other cultures, regulatory environments, or moments in the crypto market cycle. November 2022 was itself a turbulent time for crypto, following major exchange collapses, which could have shaped how respondents felt about risk and reward.
The study also measures intention to invest, not actual investment behavior. Prior research suggests intention and behavior are usually well-aligned, but the gap between them can widen when external factors — regulations, sudden market crashes, family pressure — get in the way. And because the data is observational and collected at a single point in time, the results describe associations rather than proving that any trait causes any motivation.
