Technology researchers Comparitech have used machine learning to analyze over 48k Reddit posts to determine which cryptocurrencies are viewed the most favourably. The study also included 7,500 articles from national and international news outlets.
Articles were scored based on positive and negative sentiment in relation to other articles included in the study.
Crypto chatter continues to spread
Talk about cryptocurrency in general started to increase in March 2017, when Bitcoin became more valuable than gold. This grew in volume to peak with bitcoin price in December 2017, only to fall away again as prices across the board started to tumble.
However, frequency jumped back to those peak levels in November 2018, when cryptocurrency prices were bottoming out. Since then cryptocurrency discussions on subreddits have surged, as prices have gone back up and Libra was announced.
Over 85% of online crypto discussions are positive
Although in general, people are more likely to write a negative review of something than a positive one, cryptocurrency reverses that trend. It is estimated that 85.5% of conversations on the topic were deemed positive in sentiment.
The analysis of media articles painted a different picture, however, with the majority of outlets publishing more negative articles than positive.
The most guilty of this were HuffPost, Business Insider, and the International Business Times, which posted twice as many negative articles as positive. Only Forbes bucked the trend, with 80% of its cryptocurrency related pieces having a positive sentiment.
Coin by coin breakdown
Facebook’s Libra currency tops the charts when it comes to positive sentiment on Reddit. An unbelievable 97.7% of discussions were judged to be positive.
Cardano, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Tron also performed well, with between 85 and 90% of Reddit conversations being positive. Bitcoin scored an 83.5% positive rating, while even the sometimes controversial Tether was discussed in a positive light twice as much as with negative sentiment.
The extent of how much this influences prices and market sentiment is debatable, but cannot be ignored.
