Cryptocurrencies are proliferating as instantiations of blockchain, which is a transparent, distributed ledger technology for validating transactions. Blockchain is thus said to embed trust in its technical design. Yet, blockchain’s technical promise of trust is not fulfilled when applied to the cryptocurrency ecosystem due to many social challenges stakeholders experience. By investigating a cryptocurrency chatbot (Brokerbot) that distributed information on cryptocurrency news and investments, we explored social tensions of trust between stakeholders, namely the bot’s developers, users, and the bot itself. We found that trust in Brokerbot and in the cryptocurrency ecosystem are two conjoined, but separate challenges that users and developers approached in different ways. We discuss the challenging, dual-role of a Brokerbot as an object of trust as a chatbot while simultaneously being a mediator of trust in cryptocurrency, which exposes the social-technical gap of trust. Lastly, we elaborate on trust as a negotiated social process that people shape and are shaped by through emerging ecologies of interlinked technologies like blockchain and conversational interfaces.

加密货币作为区块链的实例而激增，区块链是一种用于验证交易的透明，分布式账本技术。因此，据说区块链在其技术设计中赢得了信任。然而，由于利益相关者经历的许多社会挑战，将其应用于加密货币生态系统时，仍无法实现区块链对信任的技术承诺。通过研究分发有关加密货币新闻和投资信息的加密货币聊天机器人（Brokerbot），我们探索了利益相关者之间的信任关系，即该机器人的开发人员，用户和该机器人本身。我们发现，对Brokerbot和加密货币生态系统的信任是两个相互关联的问题，但是用户和开发人员采用不同方式应对的挑战是相互独立的。我们将Brokerbot作为一个具有挑战性的双重角色进行讨论作为聊天机器人的信任对象，同时又是加密货币信任的中介者，这暴露了信任的社会技术差距。最后，我们将信任作为一种经过协商的社会过程进行详细阐述，人们可以通过区块链和对话接口等互连技术的新兴生态来塑造人们的信任。