Are Bitcoin Users Less Sociable? An Analysis of Users' Language and Social Connections on Twitter

Abstract

Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer payment system and digital currency, has seen much growth and controversy in the four years since its introduction. Yet, despite Bitcoin's growing importance, little is known about its users. Our research explores what type of people use this domain and what concepts they tend to emphasize in their language. We analyzed over 50,000 messages from over 6,000 users of the social networking community, Twitter. Our analyses show a consistent pattern that people interested in Bitcoin are far less likely to emphasize social relations than typical users of the site. Specifically, Bitcoin followers (1) are less likely to mention family, friends, religion, sex, and emotion related words in their tweets and (2) have significantly less social connection to other users on the site. These findings offer the first empirical look at what exactly makes Bitcoin users distinct from others and can have implications for the future of the currency. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.