In these weeks of economic and financial uncertainty, it is natural to turn one’s attention to modern, digital and very popular alternative forms of investment. But digital and innovative do not necessarily mean efficient, and they certainly do not mean secure.
Following the pandemic, which significantly increased interest in digital forms of investment, digital assets such as cryptocurrencies have grown exponentially in terms of both trading volume and price.
Each cryptocurrency is divided into digital tokens traded on a distributed online ledger (blockchain), which is neither managed by traditional banking or financial intermediaries nor guaranteed by public bodies, such as the central bank. The blockchain was therefore created as an alternative trading system to regulated, centralised and public markets. Through cryptographic access, the blockchain enables transactions to be carried out using pseudonymous addresses, ensuring a high degree of privacy and security. Unlike a digital wallet held with a financial intermediary, access to the blockchain is encrypted and login credentials cannot be reset. Many investors, unfamiliar with cryptography, buy and sell cryptocurrencies through digital intermediaries, which in Europe are subject to increasing scrutiny and monitoring. By purchasing a cryptocurrency, the individual investor is investing in a digital asset devoid of the public guarantees that characterise currency issued by a central bank. Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are among the most popular cryptocurrencies, and their market capitalisation runs into billions of US dollars; their prices exhibit extremely high volatility and risk. They are therefore not suitable instruments for portfolio diversification, and investors must be aware of the very high risk of loss.
The three characteristics of cryptocurrency markets identified above (wide price fluctuations, lack of central control and rapid development) pose a serious challenge to traditional theories on the functioning of financial markets and on how prices reflect the information available in the market. Indeed, the smooth functioning of financial markets relies precisely on the ability of prices to reflect available information, whether good or bad. An article published in the Journal of Economic Surveys (Fantini, Oldani, Jia, 2026) conducted an in-depth review of the scientific literature on the extent to which cryptocurrency markets reflect available information. Understanding how information is processed in these markets is essential for investors, policymakers and researchers. If cryptocurrency prices fail to reflect the information available in the market, this creates scope for arbitrage opportunities, persistent anomalies and market manipulation, with the potential for investors to incur losses, which could be significant.
Using a combined method of bibliometric analysis and thematic review, the study analyses 977 scientific articles published between 2015 and 2024 and identifies the main areas of research and the methods used to understand how information influences cryptocurrency prices. The results show that traditional models of financial market efficiency need to be adapted to the decentralised, heterogeneous and rapidly evolving nature of these markets, incorporating insights from behavioural finance, the economics of complexity and institutional theory. Furthermore, the study highlights the need for more reliable and comparable data, as well as a regulatory framework capable of supporting the development of these markets.