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Sentiment Against Elon Musk on Twitter Rose in May Post-Bitcoin-Criticism

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Sead Fadilpašić

Journalist

Sead Fadilpašić

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Sead specializes in writing factual and informative articles to help the public navigate the ever-changing world of crypto. He has extensive experience in the blockchain industry, where he has served...

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Last updated:

June 26, 2023

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It seems that Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s argument that the markets would pay less attention to Tesla chief Elon Musk’s Bitcoin (BTC)-related tweets got a continuation – with a sentiment tracking company finding less than 15% of May tweets about Musk being positive.

The positive-to-negative sentiment of tweets about the SpaceX chief reached a new low in May, falling significantly around the same time crypto prices took a dive, and after Musk has begun criticizing Bitcoin, found sentiment tracking company Awario as Yahoo Finance reported. This is also the time when Tesla announced they’d no longer accept BTC as a form of payment.

Tweets in favor and against Musk were about equal in number in January this year. However, by May, the ratio of positive-to-negative sentiment fell by some 25% – resulting in the lowest ratio since October 2020 when Awario began algorithmically tracking this sentiment by measuring certain keywords.

The largest percentage, or some 66%, was taken by tweets about Musk that were neutral in sentiment. Negative tweets stood at 19%, while positive tweets were at 15%.

Notably, both the negative and the positive sentiments followed the Bitcoin criticism and the Tesla announcement, but positive ones did so to a smaller degree. “Some people bought into Musk’s defense that the fact Tesla still held bitcoin on its balance sheet was a major example to other corporations looking to possibly do the same,” crypto investor David Gokhshtein was quoted as saying.

To some, this likely wouldn’t be a surprise. Less than two weeks ago, Buterin argued that the recent price crash will teach crypto markets a lesson, that people will stop hanging on every Musk’s tweeted word, and that the markets will “build up an immune system over time.”

Additional negative sentiment came from dogecoin (DOGE) supporters, following Musk’s Saturday Night Live appearance and the subsequent DOGE drop.

Nonetheless, Musk still gained more than 3m followers in May, currently counting some 56.4m in total.

And while Twitter sentiment may not affect Musk, a potential impact on his companies may. “Elon is wading into an area that’s maybe not the best of statements to make because the fact of the matter is bitcoin is the future of digital currencies, it’s the root of it,” Tesla investor and Gerber Kawasaki CEO, Ross Gerber, was quoted as saying. While criticizing Bitcoin’s carbon footprint is logical, he said, “it’s a very dangerous area for Elon to get in when he’s causing people losses like he did the other day and it turns people against him and ultimately Tesla.”
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