Analysis of Bitcoin’s price spike in context of Elon Musk’s Twitter activity

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of Elon Musk’s Twitter bio change on January 29, 2021 on the discourse around Bitcoin (BTC) on Twitter and to understand how these changes relate to the changes in Bitcoin price around that time. Design/methodology/approach This study implements sentiment analysis and text mining on Twitter data to explore changes in public sentiments toward Bitcoin after Elon Musk’s Twitter bio change. Furthermore, it uses Bitcoin price data obtained from the Binance exchange to understand its relation with Twitter discussion. Findings Elon Musk’s bio change on Twitter on January 29 increased the tweet volume mentioning Bitcoin. This increase in tweets had a strong positive correlation with Bitcoin price and preceded the rise in Bitcoin price. Although the bio change had an apparent effect on the tweet volume, there was no considerable effect on the tweet sentiments, indicating that tweet sentiment is a poor predictor of Bitcoin price. Originality/value This paper proposes an understanding of how social media influencers, like Elon Musk, affect the discourse around Bitcoin and can, in turn, have an impact on Bitcoin price.