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.

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.

6. Socio-technical disruption

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

16. Event series 1

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

19. Event series 2

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

22. Event series 3

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

25. 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

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.