Data suggests major altcoins are finding it hard to maintain a strong presence on Twitter amid the market downturn.
Major altcoins have seen their Twitter presence greatly reduced in the wake of the recent cryptocurrency market crash. According to data from Bitinfocharts, major altcoins such as Ethereum, Litecoin, and XRP now find their Twitter mentions nearing two and even three-year lows.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s Twitter presence doubled in the first three months of 2020, though its tweet count remains a long way off of its 2017 all-time high.
XRP tweets hit 21 month low
Earlier this week, on March 21st, tweets bearing the hashtag #XRP numbered 2,542. That’s a 60% drop since January 2020 alone, when XRP tweets ranged between 6,000 and 7,000.
The last time XRP’s daily tweet count fell as low as 2,500 was in July 2018, almost 21 months ago.
XRP’s all-time high Twitter surge didn’t come during the 2017-2018 bull run, unlike most other coins. Instead, the peak of XRP Twitter engagement to date remains September 21st, 2018, when XRP was tweeted out 20,000 times according to Bitinfocharts.
As readers may recall, that date coincides with the first whispers regarding the then-rumoured launch of Ripple Labs’ xRapid – an XRP-based payment solution for financial institutions. Boosted by the much anticipated product launch, the price of XRP almost tripled in the week leading up to September 21st.
Litecoin reverts to 2 year tweet low
When daily Litecoin tweets fell as low as 344 earlier this month, it was the lowest Twitter engagement witnessed on behalf of Litecoin since March 2017.
That was the month in which Litecoin began its ascension leading up to its 2018 bull run. Between March and May of 2017 alone, the price of LTC increased ten times over, from $3 to $30.
From there, both the coin’s price and Twitter engagement continued climbing up and up. Remarkably, Litecoin’s return to the Twitter doldrums coincides with its fall back to the aforementioned $30 range.
Currently, Litecoin tweets currently number just 1.3% of their previous all-time high of 31,000.
Ethereum tweets down 95% from peak
Following a similar trend, Ethereum’s Twitter presence is at one of its lowest ebbs in over three years. Currently numbering around 2,500, Ethereum’s tweet-count has only sunk this low once in the past three years – that being New Year’s Day of 2020.
Barring that dip, the last time ETH’s Twitter engagement fell so low was February of 2017. That was also the month in which ETH began a 60-day, 5x increase which carried the coin price from $10 to $50.
From December 2017’s peak of 51,000 tweets in one 24-hour period, Ethereum’s Tweet-count has fallen over 95%.
Bitcoin sees twitter resurgence in 2020
Bitcoin’s Twitter engagement on March 26th amounted to 24,722 tweets. That’s a substantial drop from December 2017’s peak of 155,000, but unlike most altcoins, Bitcoin has shown a resurgent Twitter trend in 2020.
After recording as little as 12,000 tweets back in January of this year, Bitcoin tweets have since more than doubled.
Searching for reasons why, one might assume that Bitcoin’s lesser drop in value compared to most altcoins has something to do with it. After all, social media engagement surrounding cryptocurrencies tends to follow price.
However, another cause could be the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus, which reignited discussion surrounding Bitcoin’s value as a safe-haven asset.
