Crypto news thrives on negativity

News coverage of the cryptocurrency sector in mainstream media blows up when things go south. Especially surrounding major market drops media cover the news. This comes from research firm Clovr, which is specialized in blockchain technology. Their analysis concluded that there’s a correlation between the coverage of cryptocurrency values and the sentiment in those articles.

The research was based on publications from U.S. and international media, covering a period from May 1st 2013 till July 31st 2018. In total there were 7527 articles included in the research. Forbes and Business Insider are market leaders when it comes to crypto coverage, and they tend to be more positive than all the other outlets.

Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance and The Washington Post are among the outlets that tend to be more negative about the cryptocurrency market. Also tech website Gizmodo, right-wing news outlet Breitbart News and the conservative Fox News are above average in their negativity.

Until 2016 there were mostly positive articles about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. When coverage of the cryptocurrency market went up during the 2017 bull run, there was an increase of negative coverage. Negative sentiment grew more common, especially driven by the claims of ‘a bubble’ and comparison with the ‘tulip mania’.

In the image above you can see a clear correlation between news coverage and the bitcoin market value. At moment the coin drops strongly in value, there are more articles published on the topic. The most articles were published when bitcoin and the crypto market started losing their value in January 2018. After that there are two other moments where are strong decline in value comes with an increased amount of media coverage.

Originally published at NEDEROB.