Explaining Cryptocurrency Price Trends: Statistical Analysis of Social Media Posts vs Market Prices

Yajing Zhi, Lanfang Kong, Samed Atouati, T. H.Hubert Chan, Mauro Sozio

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

We conduct a statistical analysis investigating whether one could explain the cryptocurrency price trends by their historical market prices or social media posts. Our study focuses on Bitcoin while considering both volume and sentiment of Bitcoin-related posts on Reddit. We developed a classifier based on BERT, which is well known to perform well for domain-specific tasks. We then study the Granger causality link between either post volume, post sentiment and Bitcoin price. Finally, we evaluate the returns of simple investment strategies based on either post volume, post sentiment or historical Bitcoin prices. Our most important findings, based on almost five years of data from Reddit, are that there are causality links between post volume and Bitcoin price, as well as post sentiment and Bitcoin price that are statistically significant, with the former one being more pronounced. Moreover, our study suggests that post volume on Reddit better explains Bitcoin price trends than historical price trends themselves.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCACML 2024 - 2024 3rd Asia Conference on Algorithms, Computing and Machine Learning
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages234-239
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9798400716416
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Mar 2024
Externally publishedYes
Event3rd Asia Conference on Algorithms, Computing and Machine Learning, CACML 2024 - Shanghai, China
Duration: 22 Mar 202424 Mar 2024

Publication series

NameACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference3rd Asia Conference on Algorithms, Computing and Machine Learning, CACML 2024
Country/TerritoryChina
CityShanghai
Period22/03/2424/03/24

Keywords

  • Bert
  • Bitcoin
  • Granger Causality
  • Momentum Strategy
  • Reddit

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