Not much love for bitcoin as sentiment remains ‘negative’
There is little love for bitcoin this Valentine’s as sentiment around the cryptocurrency remains “slightly negative”, three months after the fallout from the collapse of crypto exchange FTX.
GBBC Digital Finance (GDF), an industry body that advocates best practice around digital finance, has partnered with CMI Analytics to create a “Bitcoin Love Index” – a daily score that uses a machine algorithm to assess the “sentiment” behind mention of bitcoin in the media. Mentions of the word “bitcoin” are drawn from a wide variety of sources, including the mainstream press as well as crypto-specific publications.
The index shows that, in the wake of FTX’s collapse, sentiment around bitcoin fell from being mainly “neutral” to “very negative”. There was an immediate decline in the following days, but it wasn’t until late November and early December, according to GDF, that bitcoin sentiment consistently returned to “neutral” levels.
Bitcoin sentiment is hovering around “neutral” today – which is also Valentine’s Day – after cooling off a bit since the start of the year. The index seems to show that there isn’t much love for the poster child of digital assets, even in this day and age.
Love affairs fade as bitcoin trades 60% lower
Longer term, GDF notes that there has been no “positive” sentiment score since the FTX fallout – the longest streak in the past two years. However, the price of bitcoin, while still volatile, has recovered this month to levels above $20,000 – similar to the price before the FTX collapse.
During all of 2022, the price of bitcoin lost more than 60%; it fell from a price of $35,275 at the end of December 2021 to $13,660 at the end of last year. The price of bitcoin had already dropped significantly when the FTX story broke, as you might expect – but that event alone temporarily wiped 25% off the price of bitcoin, practically overnight. It wasn’t until the end of January 2023 that the price of bitcoin had recovered to pre-FTX levels.
The statistics seem to show that private investors, whose household budgets are being squeezed anyway, have been spooked by the volatility of the crypto market. But it doesn’t really affect institutional confidence in the market, and there are still those who have full faith in bitcoin.
Nigel Green, CEO and founder of the deVere Group, says cryptocurrencies “still have all the benefits of being digital – speed, efficiency and convenience – but are fundamentally different as they run on an open, immutable blockchain”.
It also apparently hasn’t dampened the appetite for celebrity ambassadors at crypto companies; earlier today, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt joined Gamdom, a cryptocurrency casino, as its new brand ambassador.
