Credibility Matters: Motivations, Characteristics, and Influence Mechanisms of Crypto Key Opinion Leaders

2026-03-12

AI Summary

This study addresses the unclear mechanisms by which cryptocurrency key opinion leaders (KOLs) construct and sustain credibility in high-risk markets and how this credibility influences retail investor behavior. Grounded in self-determination theory, the research draws on in-depth interviews with 13 crypto KOLs to demonstrate that credibility is not a static attribute but a sociotechnical performance shaped by community recognition and ethical commitments. Four key credibility markers are identified: self-regulation, acknowledgment of bounded cognitive capacity, accountability, and reflexive self-correction. A hybrid thematic analysis approach, combining human coding with large language model (LLM) assistance, was employed to interpret the qualitative data. The findings offer both theoretical grounding and practical insights for designing transparency-centered credibility signaling mechanisms within Web3 ecosystems.

Technology Category

• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Representing, Reasoning, and Using Provenance, Trust
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI
• Security and Privacy: Cryptocurrency and smart contracts
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data provenance, reliability, and authenticity

Abstract

Crypto Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) shape Web3 narratives and retail investment behaviour. In volatile, high-risk markets, their credibility becomes a key determinant of their influence on followers. Yet prior research has focused on lifestyle influencers or generic financial commentary, leaving crypto KOLs' understandings of motivation, credibility, and responsibility underexplored. Drawing on interviews with 13 KOLs and self-determination theory (SDT), we examine how psychological needs are negotiated alongside monetisation and community expectations. Whereas prior work treats finfluencer credibility as a set of static credentials, our findings reveal it to be a self-determined, ethically enacted practice. We identify four community-recognised markers of credibility: self-regulation, bounded epistemic competence, accountability, and reflexive self-correction. This reframes credibility as socio-technical performance, extending SDT into high-risk crypto ecosystems. Methodologically, we employ a hybrid human-LLM thematic analysis. The study surfaces implications for designing credibility signals that prioritise transparency over hype.

Problem

• Crypto Key Opinion Leaders
• credibility
• Web3
• retail investment behaviour
• high-risk markets

Innovation

• crypto KOLs
• credibility
• self-determination theory
• human-LLM thematic analysis
• socio-technical performance