Traders who bought the rumour and sold the news of Justin Sun’s May 26 teaser tweet could have effectively participated in an epic pump and dump for the TRX and BTT digital tokens.
Following the so-called master marketer’s tweet, Tron immediately saw its market cap rise from $1.8 billion to $2.6 billion, with BitTorrent also seeing $200 million worth of gains. However, both projects have since seen $600 million and $100 million wiped off their respective valuations over the last few weeks.
Something huge and amazing going about #TRON and #BitTorrent. I will share with you after June 1. I think I have 70% to win and nail it. Fingers crossed! $TRX $BTT
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) May 26, 2019
The news ended up being the announcement that Tron founder Justin Sun won a $4.5 million bid to have lunch with billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
When analysed by research-focused company the TIE, the news that “something huge is going to happen to TRON and BitTorrent” sent TRX trading sentiment skyrocketing and caused a price jump of 51% within a week in anticipation of what may be revealed.
The spike in sentiment corresponded with a massive increase in Twitter conversations around Tron. Within one day, conversations around TRX tripled on the platform famous for spreading news fast.
The TIE noted that “BitTorrent behaves similarly to TRON. Immediately proceeding Justin’s tweet, BTT sees a massive spike in sentiment, which is followed by a 54% increase in price over two days.” BitTorrent tweet volumes also exhibited a similar pattern to Tron’s by spiking more than 400%.
The news goes live
Despite a small jump in price for Tron following the official luncheon announcement on June 3, sentiment immediately turned negative as the market was clearly underwhelmed by the news. Within 24 hours, the price of Tron had dropped 17%.
Again, BitTorrent behaved similarly to Tron, with sentiment immediately turning negative following the announcement. Price dropped 46% within days to a low of $.00113. This is 5% lower than it was prior to the May 26 tweet.
When looking into social media traffic, The TIE found that “tweets on BTT also double. Most of the conversations are negative, causing sentiment and subsequently the price of BitTorrent to crash.”
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Here is the full look at both the May 26th and June 3rd tweets by Justin Sun and the effect that they had on tweets volumes, sentiment, and price of both BitTorrent and TRON. pic.twitter.com/CckcaYYW2O
— The Tie (@TheTieIO) June 13, 2019
The analytics firm concluded: “While Twitter hype and pumps are not as common now as they were during the ICO boom of 2017, crypto remains the most sentiment-driven asset class. In crypto, news breaks on Twitter, and the crowd’s reaction causes massive swings in price.”
This tale confirms that hype, speculation, and traders can move markets, with Twitter analytics providing key insights when looking for tops, bottoms, and trend reversals in large-cap crypto assets that have a large, community-based ecosystem that is always pushing for wider adoption.
In summary, the collective valuation for both Tron and BitTorrent are up nearly $300 million based on the eventual announcement of the founder’s lunch with a man who has been ever-present on the Forbes global rich list for the last three decades.
Time will tell what actual value (if any) will come from the meeting, but I have a feeling this may not be the last opportunity to make a trade on Justin Sun’s hype-based approach to creating a community for his decentralised tokens.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.