Analysis of Opportunities and Threats in the Process of Legislating Blockchain Technology and Cryptocurrencies in Iran Based on the PEST Model

This study aims to identify and rank the most important opportunities and threats in the process of blockchain and cryptocurrency legislation in Iran and to provide a proposed legislative framework based on the PEST model. This research is an applied research in terms of purpose and descriptive survey research in terms of data collection. To gather data and analyze studies, documents, articles, books, as well as the opinions of elites and experts have been analyzed. The statistical population of this research includes experts and professors in the fields of information technology engineering, economics, management and entrepreneurship from the University of Tehran, Payame Noor University, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz and the University and Higher Research Institute of National Defense and Strategic Research. It should be noted that the number of statistical samples was selected by observing the proportion of 15 people. To explain the opportunities and threats of this technology, a total of 22 factors (11 opportunity factors and 11 threat factors) were extracted. The data collection tool is a semi-structured questionnaire whose validity and reliability were confirmed by evaluating documents and studying the background literature, and using the opinions of experts and elites. Based on the findings of the present study and examining the views of elites, the most important opportunities for blockchain legislation and cryptocurrencies in Iran are economic opportunities, political-legal opportunities, technological opportunities and socio-cultural opportunities, respectively. Economic threats, political-legal threats, socio-cultural threats and technological threats are the most important threats to blockchain legislation in Iran, respectively.