Bitcoin is Still Huge on Reddit: Study

The sentiment surrounding cryptocurrencies tends to change with time. However, one recent report has shed some light on how insiders and media platforms have covered the market so far. Earlier this week, tech analysis site Comparitech reported that cryptocurrency discussion is still trending on Reddit, one of the most popular comment and forum boards on the Internet. 

According to their report, the company claimed that it analyzed lover 48,000 posts on Reddit with top of the line machine learning techniques. Apart from the posts analyzed, they also looked into about 7,500 articles across several international and national news outlets and analyzed trends in conversations and talk of crypto assets in general. 

According to the post, there has been increased talk about crypto assets since March 2017. Since then, however, chatter seemed to have been moving in tandem with the prevalent prices of cryptocurrencies; talk about crypto piqued in December 2017 (the same time that the crypto market’s global capitalization was at the highest), while it slowed down in 2018 (the most recent extended bear market). 

It, however, noted that things started to pick up once more in November 2018, as Bitcoin and other crypto-assets began to climb out of their slump. Since then, discussions about crypto assets on subreddits have surged. 

While conducting its analysis, Comparitech divided the posts and articles into positive and negative sentiments. Per the report, it was estimated that about 85 percent of the conversations about crypto on Reddit were positive in sentiment. However, the media articles that were analyzed across several outlets seemed to be more on the negative side. 

It showed that Business Insider, the Huffington Post, and the International Business Times were the most frequent crypto bashing media outlets, as they each posted about twice as any negative crypto stories as the positive ones. It pointed out that Forbes was the lone anomaly to this trend, as about 80 percent of the crypto stories posted on the site were positive. 

Moving on, Comparitech revealed that Libra, the upcoming crypto project from social media giant Facebook, is the crypto assets with the highest positive sentiment on Reddit, logging in a 97.7 percent positivity rate in discussion sentiments.

Ether, Cardano, TRON, and Litecoin all scored between 85 and 90 percent, while Bitcoin performed slightly less than the frontrunners with 83.5 percent positivity. 

Although all of the Reddit conversations are positive, it would probably be better to focus on the perception of crypto assets from media houses. From the report, the crypto trends on some of the most popular media outlets aren’t so good, and there is no do9unt that this could affect adoption. 

When the Huffington Post reports on the hack of a cryptocurrency exchanges or some other terrible occurrence in the market more than it does the good stuff that happens, more people are going to read those, and their way of seeing cryptocurrencies will undoubtedly lean towards the negative side.

Most of the 330 million people who discuss on Reddit are crypto insiders who have technical and informed discussions and who, mostly, are in crypto for the long haul. On the flip side, media houses report to novices and people who are still looking to get a handle on what crypto is; investors looking to monitor trends, institutions mulling over the move to crypto, and more. When they see less positive news about crypto on their favorite news channels, they are less inclined to buy cryptocurrency.

That’s the difference between these sources, and that’s why this report is a tad troubling. Regardless, higher positivity is something to celebrate.