Evaluation of Cryptocurrencies for Investment Decisions in the Era of Industry 4.0: A Borda Count-Based Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set Extensions EDAS-MAIRCA-MARCOS Multi-Criteria Methodology

Blockchain technologies, which form the basis of Industry 4.0, paved the way for cryptocurrencies to emerge as technological innovation in the technology age. Recently, investors worldwide have been interested in cryptocurrencies with increasing acceleration due to high earning expectations though they have no backing and intrinsic value. As such, this paper seeks to identify the most proper cryptocurrencies from an investment standpoint in our technological era. Fifteen well-known cryptocurrencies with the highest market capitalization are evaluated as per sixteen factors. An intuitionistic fuzzy set-driven methodology incorporating Evaluation Based on Distance from Average Solution (EDAS), Multi-Attributive Ideal Real Comparative Analysis (MAIRCA, and Measurement of Alternatives and Ranking according to COmpromise Solution (MARCOS), which is the study’s prominent novelty, has been applied to provide a strong group decision vehicle for cryptocurrency selection. Notwithstanding, although the results obtained with the three approaches are highly consistent, investors would not like to doubt the instrument they will invest in. The Borda count is then applied to obtain a compromise for the rankings obtained from each approach. As per our findings, Ethereum, Tether, and Bitcoin are the most suitable cryptocurrencies, whereas reliable software, ease of inclusion in the wallet, and stability are the foremost factors to consider when investing in cryptocurrencies. The findings are further discussed in detail from a financial perspective. The proposed approach could be employed to select different investment instruments in future studies.