The Relationship Between Price & Social Media Mentions in Cryptocurrency

One of the most significant correlations in cryptocurrency has to do with a token’s price and social media mentions within a given time period. This has been studied both scientifically in research settings (Herff and Steinert, 2018 and Garcia and Schweitzer, 2015) as well as by scientists on top cryptocurrency analysts. However, one of the most prominent platforms that has brought this research into the forefront of the masses is LunarCRUSH.

Backed by Tim Draper’s Draper Goren Holm, LunarCRUSH is known for delivering social metrics that help traders and investors forecast price trends. LunarCrush has featured Helios Staking for it’s promotion of Elrond and Injective Protocol but also illustrated the clear correlation between social activity and price dynamics.

This article explores the relationship between social media engagement and the price of cryptocurrency. It will particularly focus on LunarCRUSH’s spotlight on Elrond and Injective Protocol, and price performance during that spotlight.

Specific points this article touches on includes:

• Altcoins and Mood Based Decisions
• Twitter as a Price Predictor
• $EGLD and $INJ Price Movement During LunarCRUSH Feature

Altcoins and Mood Based Decisions

Cryptocurrencies are heavily promoted across social media between influencers, blogs, and press releases, which marketing teams hope will lead to more tokens being purchased. This particularly applies to smaller cryptocurrencies, so-called “altcoins.” Altcoins with lower numbers of token holders are typically easier to influence compared to Bitcoin or Ethereum. However, even in the earlier days of Bitcoin there were similar correlations found between $BTC and social engagement when the market cap was lower, as will be discussed shortly.

Another factor that suggests a connection between cryptocurrency returns and social media is based upon theories of behavioral science. Platforms like Twitter can be seen as an indicator of society’s collective thoughts and ideas but also of public sentiment.

Twitter as a Price Indicator

Positive mood states lead to more optimism towards investment decisions (Nofsinger JR, 2005). Thus, social media might is a strong indicator to forecast cryptocurrency price movement because the price can change based on the market’s mood. While there is a lot of information on social media that is available, social scientists believe the short-term variability of Twitter makes the platform a very suitable indicator for short-term predictions.

The Garcia and Schweitzer research demonstrated similar results for Bitcoin and identified a connection between social mentions and price. For more than three years, the team of researchers studied metrics like social signals relating to information search, word of mouth volume, and opinion polarization as reflected in Tweets on Bitcoin. According to their findings, rising Bitcoin prices were preceded by rises in opinion polarization (increase of volume in difference of opinions), and growing Bitcoin prices were preceded by increases in emotional valence (as measured by the positive and negative language contained in Tweets about Bitcoin).

$EGLD and $INJ Price Movement During LunarCRUSH Feature

Moving beyond research-based settings and into the crypto-world that many of us live in everyday, similar results are everywhere. Price and social media mentions are strongly tied together. As we can see in the above screenshot, LunarCRUSH captured a 24-hour trading period from August 3 to August 4, 2021. During that period, Elrond’s social presence was up across the board. There was a 43.91% increase in mentions, an 85.53% increase in social engagements, and a 49% increase in hour-by hour social contributors. During this same period, the price of $EGLD increased by 13.48%.

Elrond reached the first position in LunarCRUSH’s ALTRank as a result of all of these percentages, which the platform calculates into an algorithm. LunarCRUSH further breaks down the score into four quadrants, social volume rank, %change in 24 hour rank, 24 hour volume rank, and 24-hour social score rank.

In the screenshot below, we can see Elrond’s price performance drastically rose the day after there was a significant spike in social mentions/ engagement. This aligns with the research mentioned above about the price of altcoins and how often they are mentioned on social media.

As seen in the chart below, Injective also experienced a similar headway. Earlier this year, Injective partnered up with Conflux Network to promote cross-chain derivative trading. During this time, the $INJ 1-day Twitter volume was up 70.5% with 266 tweets, and the price increased by 16.1% up to $12.66 per coin.

Read more about the awards that Helios Staking won from Injective Protocol in our latest blog post.

As also demonstrated with Elrond moments ago, there were large spikes in price increase following uptrends in Injective’s ALTRank (which increases with social mentions and engagement). August 1, 2021 showed a significant increase in social media mentions and engagement with a corresponding price increase started less than 2 days later on August 3, 2021.

In Conclusion

The price of a crypto token can often be determined by an increase in social media engagement of a particular token. Throughout the history of crypto, we’ve seen this trend at first with Bitcoin but then also with altcoins with smaller market caps as time went on.

LunarCRUSH is a social metrics platform that helps traders and investors forecast price trends. LunarCrush has featured platforms in the Helios Staking family including Elrond and Injective. Elrond reached the first position in ALTRank as a result of all of these percentages. Injective Protocol also experienced similar headway following uptrends in Injectives’ ALTRank (which increases with social mentions and engagement) in August 2021.

About Helios Staking

Helios Staking is a Staking-as-a-Service company that is focused on the expansion of Proof of Stake (PoS) networks. Helios is one of the Elrond Network’s chosen and trusted Genesis Launch partners, and also works closely with Injectie Protocol with whom they’ve won several awards for community, content, and validation.