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- Creators: Barrett, The Honors College
- Creators: Department of Information Systems
Sentiment analysis, which is a notably method in text mining, can be used to extract the sentiment from people’s opinion. It then provides us with valuable perception on a topic from the public’s attitude, which create more opportunities for deeper analysis and prediction.
The thesis aims to investigate public’s sentiment towards Bitcoin through analyzing 10 million Bitcoin related tweets and assigning sentiment points on tweets, then using sentiment fluctuation as a factor to predict future crypto fluctuation. Price prediction is achieved by using a machine learning model called Recurrent Neural Network which automatically learns the pattern and generate following results with memory. The analysis revels slight connection between sentiment and crypto currency and the Neural Network model showed a strong connection between sentiment score and future price prediction.
This thesis addresses the widespread questions asked of Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies - decentralized ledgers of peer to peer transactions – have taken the world by storm, with Bitcoin leading the way by means of being the original, most valuable, and most popular. Despite this widespread use, skepticism remains as to what Bitcoin is and whether it counts as money. I first defend the framework that I use for understanding Social Objects, Searle’s X counts as Y in C formula, as money is undoubtedly a social object. I then argue that Smit et al.’s account of money, while useful, mistakenly identifies an essential characteristic of money, the relative ratio scale, as a feature. I therefore present an alternative account of money. I then explain why the most commonly held account of Bitcoin, the chain Definition fails, and why Bitcoin being a fictional substance is not a problem for Bitcoin being money. I then demonstrate Bitcoin’s compatibility with my alternative account, and from this conclude that Bitcoin is Money.
This leads into an examination on the history of one cryptocurrency in particular, Bitcoin. This analysis includes the effects of the cryptomarket and the impact that it has had on various economies. Additionally, the blockchain is explored by first defining what it is and then its potential and current uses not only in the cryptomarket industry, but others as well. This includes a focus on the real estate market as well as banking. Using knowledge gained about the history of fiat money, cryptocurrencies, and the usefulness of the blockchain, this thesis compares the history of fiat currencies with the current implementation of cryptocurrency. Furthermore, the pros and cons of the possible implementation of cryptocurrency helps to provide an outlook on whether it can eventually be government regulated.