When Early Adopters Don't Adopt

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.