Role of Shariah compliance on Cryptocurrency Acceptance among Malaysians: An Empirical Study

Cryptocurrency is the first successful application of blockchain technology that represents a breakthrough in the financial industry. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized currencies with no central issuer, allowing users to perform transactions, such as virtual payment for goods and services and fund transfer with low fees independently and effectively by utilizing blockchain platforms to ensure the legitimacy and validity of the transactions conducted. However, the acceptance rate of cryptocurrency globally and in Malaysia, is not at the desired level because of consumers' concerns such as Shariah compliance. Therefore, this paper attempts to examine user perception of the acceptance of the cryptocurrency system application from the Shariah perspectives. UTAUT is utilized in this paper, together with a Shariah compliance integration to formulate and evaluate various hypotheses that would establish the proposed conceptual model. The study used a sample of 496 persons. The hypothesis testing revealed that Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence, and Shariah compliance all affect behavioral intention to adopt cryptocurrency from a Shariah perspective in Malaysia.