Mapping the Main Topics of Cryptocurrency: A Bibliometric Analysis by Text Mining

ABSTRACT

Cryptocurrencies have become a vital part of global economic and financial systems. To identify the main themes of cryptocurrency‐related publications, this study analyzes the literature in the Web of Science from 2014 to 2025 using text mining models. The empirical analysis reveals that text mining models exhibit relative strengths in terms of semantic interpretability and structural quality. We find that the main topics related to cryptocurrencies include (1) legal and regulatory issues; (2) currency systems and central bank digital currency; (3) blockchain technology and transaction security; (4) transaction‐network analysis and illicit‐activity detection; (5) adoption and digital finance; (6) financial risk and spillovers; (7) event‐driven market uncertainty; (8) price prediction; (9) trading behavior; and (10) portfolio management. Meanwhile, the temporal analysis shows heterogeneous evolutionary patterns across these themes. By providing a comparative, scalable analysis of cryptocurrency literature, our study suggests future research directions and offers evidence‐based insights into its development.