Past, present, and future of the application of machine learning in cryptocurrency research

• Published in: Research in international business and finance Vol. 63; p. 101799
• Main Authors: Ren, Yi-Shuai, Ma, Chao-Qun, Kong, Xiao-Lin, Baltas, Konstantinos, Zureigat, Qasim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.12.2022
• Subjects: Bibliometric analysis; Blockchain; Cryptocurrency; Machine learning; Cryptocurrency; Bibliometric analysis; Machine learning; Blockchain
• ISSN: 0275-5319; 1878-3384
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101799

Cryptocurrency has captured the interest of financial scholars and become a major research topic in blockchain. In cryptocurrency research, the use of machine learning algorithms is enabled by the presence of many types of data and abundant resources. However, there is currently no comprehensive review on cryptocurrencies using machine learning. Therefore, we collect papers on cryptocurrency-related using machine learning in the web of science database, and summarize these papers according to the algorithm, and draw the following conclusions: (1) The application of machine learning for cryptocurrencies research is increasing year over year; (2) Predicting cryptocurrency price trends and income fluctuations is the most relevant research topic; (3) The machine learning algorithm utilized in cryptocurrency research is not unique, and the practise of combining multiple machine learning approaches has emerged; (4) Concerns such as overfitting and interpretability still persist with machine learning methods. Finally, we suggest future research directions. [Display omitted] •A systematic literature review on the application of machine learning methods in cryptocurrency research is conducted.•The bibliometric software CiteSpace was used for co-citation analysis and keyword burstness analysis.•The use of machine learning to conduct cryptocurrency research shows a rising trend year by year.•The integration and combination of different machine learning methods have become a trend.•Price prediction and identification of illicit transactions are important topics in the cryptocurrency field.•Different cryptocurrencies, policy uncertainty, COVID-19 will be of interest to researchers in the future.