Decentralized influencers: How opinion leaders on Twitter (X) shape the Bitcoin discussion

Bitcoin has made global headlines in recent years, with a significant portion of the cryptocurrency discourse taking place on Twitter, renamed X this year. A single tweet by Elon Musk, who in 2021 announced on Twitter that Bitcoin would be accepted in payment for Tesla products, can have significant impact on the crypto market as a whole. Yet there are others on Twitter who also play a role in shaping the way Bitcoin is viewed.

A recent study by Constantin Lichti, Endrit Ademi, and Professor Andranik Tumasjan of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) revealed that certain crypto influencers who act as opinion leaders on Twitter can significantly impact the Bitcoin discourse. The team analyzed 115 million Bitcoin-related tweets posted from 2009 to 2022 and, on the basis of this extensive analysis, presented an opinion leader index that identified such influencers and classified ...