# When Early Adopters Don't Adopt By Christian Catalini (MIT Sloan), Catherine Tucker (MIT Sloan) · July 2017 Published: Science, Vol. 357, Issue 6347, pp. 135–136 · DOI: 10.1126/science.aal4476 ## Abstract Early adopters are believed to be central to the diffusion of new technologies, as they provide the initial word of mouth and momentum a technology needs to reach a critical mass of users. This Science piece draws on the MIT digital currency experiment — in which all 4,494 MIT undergraduates were offered access to Bitcoin in the fall of 2014 — to show what happens when natural early adopters are delayed relative to their peers: they are more likely to abandon the technology, and their rejection spills over to everyone else.  ## Links - [Read in Science](https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aal4476)