Analysis of Bitcoin’s price spike in context of Elon Musk’s Twitter activity
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-09-2021-0154 |
| Published date | 01 February 2022 |
| Date | 01 February 2022 |
| Pages | 341-355 |
| Author | Salma Zaman,Ussama Yaqub,Tauqeer Saleem |
Analysis of Bitcoin’s price spike
in context of Elon Musk’s
Twitter activity
Salma Zaman and Ussama Yaqub
Business School, Lahore University of Management Sciences,
Lahore, Pakistan, and
Tauqeer Saleem
Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paperis to explore the effect of Elon Musk’s Twitter bio change on January
29, 2021 on the discoursearound Bitcoin (BTC) on Twitter and to understand how thesechanges relate to the
changesin Bitcoin price around that time.
Design/methodology/approach –This study implements sentiment analysis and text mining on
Twitter data to explore changes in publicsentiments toward Bitcoin after Elon Musk’s Twitter bio change.
Furthermore, it uses Bitcoin price data obtainedfrom the Binance exchange to understand its relation with
Twitter discussion.
Findings –Elon Musk’s bio change on Twitter on January 29 increased the tweet volume mentioning
Bitcoin. This increase in tweetshad a strong positive correlation with Bitcoin price and precededthe rise in
Bitcoin price. Althoughthe bio change had an apparent effect on the tweet volume, therewas no considerable
effect onthe tweet sentiments, indicating that tweetsentiment is a poor predictor of Bitcoinprice.
Originality/value –This paper proposes an understanding of how social media influencers, like Elon
Musk, affectthe discourse around Bitcoin and can, in turn, have animpact on Bitcoin price.
Keywords Sentiment analysis, Twitter, Bitcoin, Elon Musk
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Social media use has become widespread, especially following the rapid increase in
smartphones and cellular services worldwide. An increasing number of people worldwide
continue to join these online platforms to interact with each other and voice opinions.
Everything is under discussion on these platforms, from movies and sports to global issues
like global warming and politics. As these social media websites are easily accessible and
many people use them regularly,they reflect what is happening in the world. Twitter is one
such social media platform that started in 2006 and has over 330 million monthly active
users [1]. These users range from ordinary people and celebrities to firms, news agencies
and governments. Withthis considerable number of diverse users, it is safe to assume thatif
something interesting happenssomewhere in the real world, someone on Twitter will tweet
about it. Thus, we have witnessed an increased research activity involving twitter data
where researchers arepredicting stock price or elections results based on data collectedfrom
Twitter.
One area that has significantly attracted researchers’attention is the impact of Twitter
discourse on the price of cryptocurrencies (Kraaijeveld and De Smedt, 2020;Mohapatra et al.,2019).
Bitcoin’s price
spike
341
Received16 September 2021
Revised19 December 2021
Accepted4 January 2022
GlobalKnowledge, Memory and
Communication
Vol.72 No. 4/5, 2023
pp. 341-355
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2514-9342
DOI 10.1108/GKMC-09-2021-0154
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