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Reddit mentions may help predict changes in cryptocurrency value

Traders could have earned a threefold return on their investments by analysing trends in cryptocurrency forums on Reddit

By Chris Stokel-Walker

16 January 2024

Traders try to anticipate whether a cryptocurrency’s price will rise or fall

Ira Budanova/Alamy

Cryptocurrency traders could have tripled their money by basing their investments on whether the number of posts mentioning a currency on Reddit was greater than the day before.

The trading technique was uncovered by Emiliano De Cristofaro at the University of California, Riverside, and his colleagues, who analysed more than 130 million posts on 122 cryptocurrency forums, known as subreddits, between 1 June 2005 and 31 August 2022. They then tracked…

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