Characterizing Speed and Scale of Cryptocurrency Discussion Spread on Reddit

Cryptocurrencies are a novel and disruptive technology that has prompted a new approach to how currencies work in the modern economy. As such, online discussions related to cryptocurrencies often go beyond posts about the technology and underlying architecture of the various coins, to subjective speculations of price fluctuations and predictions. Furthermore, online discussions, potentially driven by foreign adversaries, criminals or hackers, can have a significant impact on our economy and national security if spread at scale. This paper is the first to qualitatively measure and contrast discussion growth about three popular cryptocurrencies with key distinctions in motivation, usage, and implementation - Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Monero on Reddit. More specifically, we measure how discussions relevant to these coins spread in online social environments - how deep and how wide they go, how long they last, how many people they reach, etc. More importantly, we compare user behavior patterns between the focused community of the official coin subreddits and the general community across Reddit as a whole. Our Reddit sample covers three years of data between 2015 and 2018 and includes a time period of a record high Bitcoin price rise.1 Our results demonstrate that while the largest discussions on Reddit are focused on Bitcoin, posts about Monero (a cryptocurrency often used by criminals for illegal transactions on the Dark Web2) start discussions that are typically longer and wider. Bitcoin posts trigger subsequent discussion more immediately but Monero posts are more likely to trigger a longer lasting discussion. We find that moderately subjective posts across all three coins trigger larger, longer, and more viral discussion cascades within both focused and general communities on Reddit. Our analysis aims to bring the awareness to online discussion spread relevant to cryptocurrencies in addition to informing models for forecasting cryptocurrency price that rely on discussions in social media.