Twelve of every hundred Twitter posts are about cryptocurrency. At the same time, 70% of all mentions of it belong to 30 users. This is stated in a new study by BDCenter Digital.
By examining more than 1.1 million tweets published from January 2018 to June 2020, analysts identified which coins authors draw attention to most and whether they can influence their price.
Among thought leaders, 123 authors were chosen who speak about the industry as a whole, do not represent any blockchain project and do not promote scams. Their accounts have at least 10,000 followers.
The list of analyzed coins included 168 coins from the top 200 on CoinMarketCap.
Twitter account activity and follower engagement
During the period, authors mentioned the studied coins almost 138,000 times. That is about 12 in 100 tweets about cryptocurrency.
70% of all mentions belong to 30 users.
Top 30 Twitter accounts that mention coins most often.
The average number of followers among active authors is 56,000. This is below the overall sample average, which stands at 92,000.
The average engagement rate among followers is about 750%. This is twice as high as that of other thought leaders, who are less active — they average 310%.
If a crypto project wants to promote itself on Twitter, it should pay attention to accounts that:
- regularly publish on the topic;
- have follower counts around 50,000–100,000. As the study shows, mid-sized accounts are more engaged than whales;
- have an engagement rate above 500%.
Accounts meeting these criteria sit right in the central square.
Arrangement of the top 30 accounts by total mentions. On the horizontal axis – the number of mentions; on the vertical axis – engagement. The circle size corresponds to the number of followers.
Trends in Mentions
Most often, authors write about Bitcoin: in 2018 it accounted for 44.8% of all mentions, and in 2020 for 50.71%. Bitcoin’s lead was evident, so researchers focused on analyzing the next 25 coins by frequency of mentions.
In 2018, Twitter users talked about coins more often than in 2019. In the first half of 2020, mentions of coins declined. This is visible on the monthly timeline.
Only 9 of the 25 coins have an upward trend or a neutral position. The number of mentions for the rest of the cryptocurrencies is falling. Experts link this to the ‘disillusionment’ phase and the subsequent move to a ‘productivity plateau’: at the start of 2018 the cryptocurrency market began to fall rapidly and thousands of coins lost value and traders’ trust.
The link between price movements and mentions on Twitter
Combined graphs of daily mentions for a coin and the coin’s USD price illustrate a link between price changes and how often people talk about it.
Analysts noted a decline in posts about XRP from Ripple and Litecoin.
On XRP’s chart in September–October 2018, May 2019 and February 2020 there is a clearly simultaneous change in price and a rise in mentions.
That trend also appears on the LTC chart at the end of 2018: as the market turns, the price begins to rise and by June 2019 it reaches a peak.
There has been a rise in tweets about Binance Coin (BNB).
Surges in mentions also appear on the chart for the stablecoin USDT, though its price remains largely unchanged. Analysts attribute the sudden interest in the coin to the influence of other cryptocurrencies traded with it.
To test the hypothesis that a price move is directly linked to mentions and their mutual influence, BDCenter Digital analysts built a correlation matrix.
Source: BDCenter Digital.
The left-hand panel marks the correlations between price and mentions, while the right-hand panel shows correlations between prices. The scale on the right indicates the level of correlation.
As the chart shows, the right panel exhibits a strong correlation, while the left sits roughly around 0–0.2, a weak indicator.
“Despite the fact that the graphs of coin price movements and the number of mentions look visually similar and somewhat mirror each other, there is no direct or strong link between these two parameters. The rise in the number of tweets about a coin is merely a consequence of changes in its price, not the other way around,” explain the analysts.
In March, analysts from BDCenter Digital found whether audits and insurance for crypto exchanges protect customers’ money.
Bitcoin exchanges and cybersecurity trends: will audits and insurance save your money
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