Cryptocurrency Market: State, Problems and Prospects

The first cryptocurrency appeared in 2009 and since then, both the number of active cryptocurrencies and the number of owners of crypto accounts have been steadily increasing. Despite the lack of a unified position on the issue of its legalization and the legality of its use for settlements and transactions on a par with “real” money, more and more users, both among individuals and legal entities, are inclined to the prospects of cryptocurrency investments, as evidenced by the investment policy of a number of large Wall Street companies in 2020–2021. Thus, the relevance of the chosen topic is due to the need to analyze the dynamics of the young cryptocurrency market, which is developing according to its own laws, which differ from the mechanisms of functioning of traditional markets. The development of the cryptocurrency market is influenced by factors such as the number of investors and the degree of development of blockchain technologies. The purpose of the study is to identify the factors that control the dynamics of the cryptocurrency exchange rate and assess their impact on the current state of the cryptocurrency market. To achieve this goal, such scientific and practical research tasks were formulated as identifying factors affecting the popularity of cryptocurrencies in the world; describing the advantages and disadvantages of using cryptocurrencies; conducting a retrospective analysis of the world experience in regulating the cryptocurrency market and analyzing the dynamics of the value of cryptocurrencies, using Bitcoin as the first and most popular cryptocurrency in the world. Particular attention was paid to the problem of identifying the factor that influenced the downward dynamics of the value of cryptocurrencies since mid-September 2021. When writing the article, such methods as analysis of statistical information, analysis of the dynamics of individual elements of the market, a forecast based on consumer judgments, the study of global strategy directions, and others were used. The result of the study was the disclosure of the influence of a new factor on the cryptocurrency market – energy.