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Bitcoin Blockchains on Twitter timelines: A Social Media analysis of cryptocurrency discourse in the Australian Twittersphere

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Alexia Maddox

Presentation at Concordia University October 2018 Dr Alexia Maddox, Lecturer in Communications, School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University. Email: a.maddox@deakin.edu.au Keywords: Social media analysis; twitter; cryptocurrencies; social disruption; digital trace data. Abstract Cryptocurrencies represent emerging financial technologies engendered through overlapping community values of decentralised peer-to-peer exchange, encryption technologies and an overarching agenda towards the disruption of centralised banking within the fiat economy. This paper will trace the development and shifts in public discourse within social media surrounding cryptocurrencies. The last five years have seen cryptocurrencies move from technological emergence to a broadening range of applications and history potholed with disputes, divergence, hacks and scams within the community. The accompanying influence of speculation has shifted the focus from social adoption to value volatility and seen the incorporation of associated technologies within banking and other organisational processes. The emphasis within public discourse has also followed a shift from bitcoin to blockchain. The study is grounded through a Twitter analysis of cryptocurrency-related social media discourse within the Australian context. The social media analysis works with social media archives of the Australian Twittersphere captured between early 2012 to May 2017. Access to this curated archive is through TrISMA and the timeframe under analysis aligns with the most detailed available dataset. The analysis seeks to characterise the emergence of public dialogue surrounding cryptocurrency use and application over time, focusing on peak engagement events. The key concepts directing the focus and interpretation of the social media analysis include financial inclusion, socio-technical disruption and social change. The whimsical quest of the study is to learn where the digital frontier has shifted to within this community and point to possible future developments. From a community studies perspective the case study represents an initial foray into data analytics to explore whether it is possible to detect the shifting shape and form of digital community through its environmental imprint (Maddox 2016). This methodological aspect of the work speaks to an attempt to generate a data recognition practice that can be deployed to search for signatures of social disruption within digital trace data. Bio: Alexia Maddox is a digital sociologist with research interests are community studies, research methods and digital frontiers. Here recent book, Research Methods and Global Online Communities: a case study with Routledge, combines these areas and forms the basis of her study of emerging communities forming through the internet and cryptography.

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Dr Alexia Maddox Bitcoin, Blockchains on Twitter timelines A social media analysis of cryptocurrency discourse in the Australian Twittersphere Twitter: @alexiamadd
Overview ❖ Research agenda ❖ Visualising social form ❖ Characterising digital communities ❖ Social surfaces ❖ Data alignments for visualisation ❖ Socio-technical disruption ❖ Case study 1: cryptocurrency community(ies) ❖ Case study 2: Dark web community(ies).
Research context ❖ Social Scientist specialising in the study of digital communities, digital social frontiers, and digital research methods including ❖ the study of collective behaviours online ❖ social media use ❖ digital cultures ❖ research methods to observe, monitor and engage online cohorts. ❖ Themes of social change, social cohesion, social activism and social inclusion.
Research vision ❖ Generate a data recognition practice (AI/machine learning) ❖ Model social intelligence in 3D immersive environments. ❖ search for signatures of social disruption within digital trace data. ❖ Interactive and predictive analysis (historical and real time). ❖ Identify non-human actors within social datasets that influence social sentiment.
Research agenda ❖ Investigating available data, techniques and community processes suitable for modelling and visualisation. ❖ Building collaborations through an interdisciplinary network of researchers across the social sciences, humanities and computational sciences (but not limited to!). ❖ Developing an interactive and immersive platform for researchers and research stakeholders to model social processes.
Socio-technical disruption
Socio-technical disruption ❖ Hypotheses directing investigation: ❖ Digital communities generate and appropriate emerging technologies to create alternative possibilities. ❖ Socio-technical disruption is manifested through digital communities. ❖ Socio-technical disruption may be identifiable through digital signatures. ❖ Forms of identifiable disruption may be ambivalent, malicious or resistance/refusal acts against structural inequalities. ❖ Within a community this can be characterised through both internal events and externalised activities.
Case study 1: Cryptocurrencies ❖ To study public discourse surrounding cryptocurrencies via social media analysis. ❖ Cryptocurrencies are: ❖ Digital payments systems ❖ based upon decentralised peer-to-peer exchange practices ❖ Use of encryption technologies for user privacy and anonymity. ❖ Contentious developments widely discussed within social media surrounding cryptocurrencies over the last five years (2012-2017).
Case study 1: Cryptocurrencies ❖ Community profile ❖ Origins within the Cyber-libertarians of the 1990s (Cypherpunks email list formed in 1992). ❖ Value field includes: privacy, anonymity, personal sovereignty & autonomy, freedom (of information and by contractual relationships), disruption of state, decentralisation, peer-to-peer socio-technical architectures, code-as-law. ❖ Goldbugs, hippies, cyberlibertarians and so on … (Maurer 2013). ❖ Cypherpunks and Crypto-anarchists (Swartz 2018). ❖ Broader base includes fintech enthusiasts and speculators, start ups and entrepreneurs, privacy advocates. Maddox, A, Singh, S, Horst, H & Adamson, G 2016, 'An ethnography of Bitcoin: Towards a future research agenda', Australian Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 65-78.
Case study 1: Cryptocurrencies ❖ External disruption ❖ Community agenda towards the disruption of centralised banking system ❖ Frictionless transfers across national borders (ie stateless transfer). ❖ Blockchain developments (cf. Allen 2018, Zhao 2016)
Case study 1: Cryptocurrencies ❖ Internal disruption ❖ There have been several contentious events within the community (ie forking in the blockchain, hacks and scams). ❖ These are disputes surrounding what the technologies can or should do linked to disputes between values.
Case study 1: Cryptocurrencies ❖ Trends & tensions over 2012-early 2017 ❖ Adoption: drive to bring in users and create network effect (cf cryptokitties and dogecoin) ❖ Risk: Scams and hacks through exchanges ie Mt Gox ❖ Investment: volatility leads to speculation bubble ❖ Legislation: (ie taxation rulings - cryptocurrencies as asset) ❖ Reputation: Allies and detractors ❖ Digital metallism vs infrastructural mutualism (Swartz 2018).
Bitcoin Blockchains on Twitter timelines: A Social Media analysis of cryptocurrency discourse in the Australian Twittersphere
Data gathered through TrISMA archive and processed through Tableau (unpublished) Figure: Cryptocurrency discussion in the Australian Twittersphere 2012 to early 2017
Data gathered through TrISMA archive and processed through Tableau (unpublished) Figure: Cryptocurrency discussion in the Australian Twittersphere 2012 to early 2017 Event series 1 Event series 2 Event series 3
Event series 1
Data gathered through TrISMA archive and processed through Tableau (unpublished) Figure: Event series 1
Event 1 transcript WHAT GOES UP… — Bitcoin crashes, losing nearly half of its value in six hours Plunge happens on the same day one anonymous redditor made it rain in Bitcoin. - 4/10/2013, 1:40 PM On Wednesday afternoon, the Bitcoin bubble appears to have burst. As of this writing, its current value is around $160—down from a high of $260. (It fell as low as $130 today.) There is no obvious explanation for why the digital currency has fallen so far and so fast, although the market correcting after such a huge rise might be a good explanation. (Update 4:05pm CT: Bitcoin seems to have somewhat recovered and appears to be hovering around $200. Update 6:00pm CT: The exchange rate has fallen back to around $160.) Some redditors have taken solace in a comment thread entitled "Hold Spartans." "This is just the market venting some pressure after these huge gains," wrote anotherblog. "To be honest I'm glad it's happening now. If it recovers, it will demonstrate resilience in the market and give confidence to future buyers and current holders that they don't need to panic sell, reduce the chances of a crash in the future." Coincidentally, the plunge came several hours after a reddit user by the name of “Bitcoinbillionaire” suddenly, spontaneously decided to give away around $12,000 (more than 63 BTC) worth of the digital currency. Bitcoinbillionaire rewarded 13 seemingly random redditors, then stopped the whirlwind spree after about eight hours. At the moment, no evidence links the currency's plunge with this random reddit charity. Bitcoinbillionaire took advantage of reddit’s Bitcointip mechanism, which allows users to send each RealTimeBitcoinDataServices CYRUS FARIVAR SUBSCRIPTIONS SIGN IN
Event series 2
Data gathered through TrISMA archive and processed through Tableau (unpublished) Figure: Event Series 2 Event 2bEvent 2a
Event 2 transcript analysis 03.07.14 03:20 PM WHY BITCOIN DOESN'T WANT A REAL SATOSHI NAKAMOTO IN THE HOURS after Newsweek claimed to have discovered the identity of the mystery-shrouded creator of the bitcoin cryptocurrency – pointing fingers at a 64-year-old retired engineer named Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto – a gaggle of reporters showed up on the man's lawn in Southern California. And when he hopped into a blue Toyota Prius with one reporter, the rest of them piled into their own cars and chased him through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, desperate to get the story behind the myth of bitcoin's founding father. But those at the heart of the bitcoin community responded quite differently. The lead developer of the software that drives the bitcoin system was angry that Newsweek had gone after this man and his family, publishing his license plate number and a photograph of his house, and many others agreed. Even before the Associated Press reported that Dorian Nakamoto had denied any involvement with the digital currency, the bitcoin faithful were sure that Newsweek was mistaken. At the online discussion forum Reddit, one person immediately pointed out that at approximately the same time that bitcoin was released, Dorian Nakamoto was online writing letters to a model train magazine. "I don't think it's him," bitcoin enthusiast Fred Friis told us soon after the Newsweek story broke, with no further explanation. >Bitcoin is – by design – a leaderless project. The digital currency runs best that way The bitcoin community has now rejected the Newsweek article because so much evidence has piled up against it. But underpinning the immediate Dorian S. Nakamoto, exits his home surrounded by members of the media in Temple City, California on Thursday. PHOTO: JONATHAN ALCORN/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES ROBERT MCMILLAN BUSINESS SUBSCRIBE
Event series 3
Data gathered through TrISMA archive and processed through Tableau (unpublished) Figure: Event Series 3 Event 3a Event 3b Event 3c
Data gathered through TrISMA archive and processed through Tableau (unpublished) Figure: Event Series 3c
https#ethereum @metagolddev eth meg #game #gamedev new website launched hello jq8uj41khl #blockchain bitcoin #bitcoin blockchain @pbucquet amp #fintech @cryptooz #cryptocurrency ico @btcbias @hyperrts #iot announcement metagold price via #btc way now #ethics btc join project just today #ai #crypto bta translation like next use need time exchange #bet help one #ethiopia money big great trading #altcoins @bitcoinagile get #altcoin giant live @oceancurve bonus end financial good know secure world 2017 @britishchamber bank latest panel #barter gold love network usd @batachina pay@betbybitcoins bet update earn future less make @cryptocoinsnews day htt see wave #decentralized driving energy innovative launch Figure: Word Cloud from Event 3C of Retweeted text only
From Bitcoin to Blockchain
Data gathered through TrISMA archive and processed through Tableau (unpublished) Figure: From Bitcoin to Blockchain
Bitcoin Blockchains on Twitter timelines: A Social Media analysis of cryptocurrency discourse in the Australian Twittersphere
Where to from here? ❖ More detailed transcript analysis using coding of transcript. ❖ Analysis of key influencers in each of the events. ❖ Sentiment analysis surrounding key events to detect polarisation. ❖ Work towards a process that will support the identification of signatures of disruption within events.

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Bitcoin Blockchains on Twitter timelines: A Social Media analysis of cryptocurrency discourse in the Australian Twittersphere

  • 1. Dr Alexia Maddox Bitcoin, Blockchains on Twitter timelines A social media analysis of cryptocurrency discourse in the Australian Twittersphere Twitter: @alexiamadd
  • 2. Overview ❖ Research agenda ❖ Visualising social form ❖ Characterising digital communities ❖ Social surfaces ❖ Data alignments for visualisation ❖ Socio-technical disruption ❖ Case study 1: cryptocurrency community(ies) ❖ Case study 2: Dark web community(ies).
  • 3. Research context ❖ Social Scientist specialising in the study of digital communities, digital social frontiers, and digital research methods including ❖ the study of collective behaviours online ❖ social media use ❖ digital cultures ❖ research methods to observe, monitor and engage online cohorts. ❖ Themes of social change, social cohesion, social activism and social inclusion.
  • 4. Research vision ❖ Generate a data recognition practice (AI/machine learning) ❖ Model social intelligence in 3D immersive environments. ❖ search for signatures of social disruption within digital trace data. ❖ Interactive and predictive analysis (historical and real time). ❖ Identify non-human actors within social datasets that influence social sentiment.
  • 5. Research agenda ❖ Investigating available data, techniques and community processes suitable for modelling and visualisation. ❖ Building collaborations through an interdisciplinary network of researchers across the social sciences, humanities and computational sciences (but not limited to!). ❖ Developing an interactive and immersive platform for researchers and research stakeholders to model social processes.
  • 7. Socio-technical disruption ❖ Hypotheses directing investigation: ❖ Digital communities generate and appropriate emerging technologies to create alternative possibilities. ❖ Socio-technical disruption is manifested through digital communities. ❖ Socio-technical disruption may be identifiable through digital signatures. ❖ Forms of identifiable disruption may be ambivalent, malicious or resistance/refusal acts against structural inequalities. ❖ Within a community this can be characterised through both internal events and externalised activities.
  • 8. Case study 1: Cryptocurrencies ❖ To study public discourse surrounding cryptocurrencies via social media analysis. ❖ Cryptocurrencies are: ❖ Digital payments systems ❖ based upon decentralised peer-to-peer exchange practices ❖ Use of encryption technologies for user privacy and anonymity. ❖ Contentious developments widely discussed within social media surrounding cryptocurrencies over the last five years (2012-2017).
  • 9. Case study 1: Cryptocurrencies ❖ Community profile ❖ Origins within the Cyber-libertarians of the 1990s (Cypherpunks email list formed in 1992). ❖ Value field includes: privacy, anonymity, personal sovereignty & autonomy, freedom (of information and by contractual relationships), disruption of state, decentralisation, peer-to-peer socio-technical architectures, code-as-law. ❖ Goldbugs, hippies, cyberlibertarians and so on … (Maurer 2013). ❖ Cypherpunks and Crypto-anarchists (Swartz 2018). ❖ Broader base includes fintech enthusiasts and speculators, start ups and entrepreneurs, privacy advocates. Maddox, A, Singh, S, Horst, H & Adamson, G 2016, 'An ethnography of Bitcoin: Towards a future research agenda', Australian Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 65-78.
  • 10. Case study 1: Cryptocurrencies ❖ External disruption ❖ Community agenda towards the disruption of centralised banking system ❖ Frictionless transfers across national borders (ie stateless transfer). ❖ Blockchain developments (cf. Allen 2018, Zhao 2016)
  • 11. Case study 1: Cryptocurrencies ❖ Internal disruption ❖ There have been several contentious events within the community (ie forking in the blockchain, hacks and scams). ❖ These are disputes surrounding what the technologies can or should do linked to disputes between values.
  • 12. Case study 1: Cryptocurrencies ❖ Trends & tensions over 2012-early 2017 ❖ Adoption: drive to bring in users and create network effect (cf cryptokitties and dogecoin) ❖ Risk: Scams and hacks through exchanges ie Mt Gox ❖ Investment: volatility leads to speculation bubble ❖ Legislation: (ie taxation rulings - cryptocurrencies as asset) ❖ Reputation: Allies and detractors ❖ Digital metallism vs infrastructural mutualism (Swartz 2018).
  • 14. Data gathered through TrISMA archive and processed through Tableau (unpublished) Figure: Cryptocurrency discussion in the Australian Twittersphere 2012 to early 2017
  • 15. Data gathered through TrISMA archive and processed through Tableau (unpublished) Figure: Cryptocurrency discussion in the Australian Twittersphere 2012 to early 2017 Event series 1 Event series 2 Event series 3
  • 17. Data gathered through TrISMA archive and processed through Tableau (unpublished) Figure: Event series 1
  • 18. Event 1 transcript WHAT GOES UP… — Bitcoin crashes, losing nearly half of its value in six hours Plunge happens on the same day one anonymous redditor made it rain in Bitcoin. - 4/10/2013, 1:40 PM On Wednesday afternoon, the Bitcoin bubble appears to have burst. As of this writing, its current value is around $160—down from a high of $260. (It fell as low as $130 today.) There is no obvious explanation for why the digital currency has fallen so far and so fast, although the market correcting after such a huge rise might be a good explanation. (Update 4:05pm CT: Bitcoin seems to have somewhat recovered and appears to be hovering around $200. Update 6:00pm CT: The exchange rate has fallen back to around $160.) Some redditors have taken solace in a comment thread entitled "Hold Spartans." "This is just the market venting some pressure after these huge gains," wrote anotherblog. "To be honest I'm glad it's happening now. If it recovers, it will demonstrate resilience in the market and give confidence to future buyers and current holders that they don't need to panic sell, reduce the chances of a crash in the future." Coincidentally, the plunge came several hours after a reddit user by the name of “Bitcoinbillionaire” suddenly, spontaneously decided to give away around $12,000 (more than 63 BTC) worth of the digital currency. Bitcoinbillionaire rewarded 13 seemingly random redditors, then stopped the whirlwind spree after about eight hours. At the moment, no evidence links the currency's plunge with this random reddit charity. Bitcoinbillionaire took advantage of reddit’s Bitcointip mechanism, which allows users to send each RealTimeBitcoinDataServices CYRUS FARIVAR SUBSCRIPTIONS SIGN IN
  • 20. Data gathered through TrISMA archive and processed through Tableau (unpublished) Figure: Event Series 2 Event 2bEvent 2a
  • 21. Event 2 transcript analysis 03.07.14 03:20 PM WHY BITCOIN DOESN'T WANT A REAL SATOSHI NAKAMOTO IN THE HOURS after Newsweek claimed to have discovered the identity of the mystery-shrouded creator of the bitcoin cryptocurrency – pointing fingers at a 64-year-old retired engineer named Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto – a gaggle of reporters showed up on the man's lawn in Southern California. And when he hopped into a blue Toyota Prius with one reporter, the rest of them piled into their own cars and chased him through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, desperate to get the story behind the myth of bitcoin's founding father. But those at the heart of the bitcoin community responded quite differently. The lead developer of the software that drives the bitcoin system was angry that Newsweek had gone after this man and his family, publishing his license plate number and a photograph of his house, and many others agreed. Even before the Associated Press reported that Dorian Nakamoto had denied any involvement with the digital currency, the bitcoin faithful were sure that Newsweek was mistaken. At the online discussion forum Reddit, one person immediately pointed out that at approximately the same time that bitcoin was released, Dorian Nakamoto was online writing letters to a model train magazine. "I don't think it's him," bitcoin enthusiast Fred Friis told us soon after the Newsweek story broke, with no further explanation. >Bitcoin is – by design – a leaderless project. The digital currency runs best that way The bitcoin community has now rejected the Newsweek article because so much evidence has piled up against it. But underpinning the immediate Dorian S. Nakamoto, exits his home surrounded by members of the media in Temple City, California on Thursday. PHOTO: JONATHAN ALCORN/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES ROBERT MCMILLAN BUSINESS SUBSCRIBE
  • 23. Data gathered through TrISMA archive and processed through Tableau (unpublished) Figure: Event Series 3 Event 3a Event 3b Event 3c
  • 24. Data gathered through TrISMA archive and processed through Tableau (unpublished) Figure: Event Series 3c
  • 26. From Bitcoin to Blockchain
  • 27. Data gathered through TrISMA archive and processed through Tableau (unpublished) Figure: From Bitcoin to Blockchain
  • 29. Where to from here? ❖ More detailed transcript analysis using coding of transcript. ❖ Analysis of key influencers in each of the events. ❖ Sentiment analysis surrounding key events to detect polarisation. ❖ Work towards a process that will support the identification of signatures of disruption within events.