Blockchain adoption: value creation or insider selling?

Using a sample of listed firms in China, we aim to examine the motivation of blockchain adoption and propose two opposite hypotheses, namely value creation hypothesis and insider selling hypothesis. The empirical results demonstrate that initial blockchain adoption announcement leads to approximately 2% CAAR over the three-day interval around the release, whereas the abnormal return quickly reverses after the announcement, implying that the blockchain adoption can only provide short-term value and against the value creation hypothesis. The finding remains robust for largest industries (manufacturing and information technology) and release channels. On the contrary, we observe a significant positive effect of insider selling on the blockchain adoption announcement, which supports the insider selling hypothesis. Our findings can provide a better understanding on firms' motivation of blockchain adoption, warn the investors to keep a rational attitude to 'blockchain hysteria' when making investment decisions, and motivate the regulators to propose strict information disclosure mechanism and prevent insider selling behaviours.