Historically, the tech community has been exclusionary — with barriers related to networking opportunities, education prerequisites, and access to information. Yet, the rampant growth and interest in crypto have slowly changed this narrative. It is no surprise that the younger and more technologically savvy generation is turning to X — formerly known as Twitter, to reach a larger audience with their words and thoughts. Since, all one needs is access to WiFi to simply learn from millions of individuals from all sorts of backgrounds, ages, and experiences.
So, how has X revolutionized how we talk about crypto?
Due to involvement rising in the cryptocurrency market, let alone the tech community as a whole, the copious amount of news and updates cannot be only managed by traditional news outlets. In traditional news outlets, the writers are often slowed down by the process of drafting, outlining, and researching — while X allows users to quickly get their point across in 280 characters. Although this means these spaces are often followed by “informal” language, this allows the dialog to form and inclusive interactions between users to bloom.
This sentiment has been further articulated by Oliver Kraaijeveld and Johannes De Smedt, in their piece The predictive power of public Twitter sentiment for forecasting cryptocurrency prices:
“Due to the relatively young age of the cryptocurrency market, traditional news outlets do not always timely report events, which has led to social media being a primary source of information for cryptocurrency investors. Specifically, the micro-blogging website Twitter is a widely used source for cryptocurrency information. Not only does Twitter provide live updates on cryptocurrencies, it is also a rich source of emotional intelligence, as investors frequently express their sentiment.”So as web3 development gives users more control over their data and digital identities, X gives its users control over the rapidly changing market conditions through real-time updates. These real-time updates have an impact on influencing financial markets, the study done by Zhang et al. (2011) concluded that X can provide a gauge of how the market is doing by analyzing emotional tweeting outbursts. This is because these emotional tweeting outbursts show how we are oftentimes debilitated by our emotional state, in turn influencing our decisions when it comes to stock market investments (Gilbert et. al 2010). Additionally, explosive emotional reactions influencing markets have also been further researched in the study by Li et al. (2017). This study showed that social influence, such as increasing engagement to posts will amplify the relationship between a positive attitude on a certain financial asset with an abnormal financial return of gain or losses.
Moreover, social influence driving the ups and downs in the market is not something new to social media. Yet, it’s X’s ability to foster millions of conversations, individual thoughts and predictions, as well as quick updates that make its platform so unique. This collective that X has created through an accessible platform, has allowed public opinion to aid this exclusive space into one that is open on a world scale.
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Gilbert, E. & Karahalios, K. (2010). Widespread Worry and the Stock Market. 4th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), 2010.
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KraaijeveldO. et al. The predictive power of public Twitter sentiment for forecasting cryptocurrency prices, Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money (2020)
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Li, T., van Dalen, J., van Rees, P.J., 2017. More than just noise? Examining the information content of stock microblogs on financial markets. J. Inform. Technol.
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X. Zhang, H. Fuehres, P.A. Gloor Predicting stock market indicators through Twitter “I hope it is not as bad as I fear” Procedia — Soc. Behav. Sci., 26 (2011), pp. 55–62