Users of the platform can register their interest in a specific asset by ‘watching’ it. Like on other social network platforms, this ensures that content related to the stock or cryptocurrency watched will appear on that user’s feed. There are certain limitations when trying to derive investor sentiment from the number of StockTwits watchers. For example, users must manually ‘unwatch’ something to highlight that their interest has waned. Of course, many users won’t bother to do this. This explains some of the seemingly anomalous results in the top ten listed below. That being said, the comparisons between an earlier top ten produced by StockTwits itself, and today’s is rather telling. From such a comparison, we can deduce that investor interest in the space has boomed and blockchain-native digital assets are much more popular over tokens issued on a platform like Ethereum or EOS than they were two years ago.

op Ten Most Watched Cryptocurrencies on StockTwits

1. Bitcoin (BTC.X) 138,224 Watchers
2. Ethereum (ETH.X) 66,749 Watchers
3. Ripple (XRP.X) 59,367 Watchers
4. Litecoin (LTC.X) 57,460 Watchers
5. Tronix (TRX.X) 29,263 Watchers
6. Bitcoin Cash (BCH.X) 18,422 Watchers
7. Stellar Lumens XLM.X 17,642 Watchers
8. Cardano (ADA.X) 14,939 Watchers
9. IOTA (IOT.X) 12,656 Watchers
10. NEO (NEO.X) 11,913 Watchers

As you can see, the most popular cryptocurrencies according to the platform aren’t necessarily those that are performing best in the market. The top-three should come as no surprise to anyone even mildly knowledgeable about cryptocurrencies. Bankers’ favorite crypto asset, XRP, sits in third; the original smart contract platform, Ethereum, is number two; and Bitcoin, the digital currency that started it all, is at the top. However, there are some notable differences between the current top-ten in terms of market capitalization and the number of people watching them on StockTwits. One such difference is the fact that Tron (TRX) appears so high up the listings. We believe this is thanks to the project’s active community, as well as high profile media attention brought by its founder, Justin Sun, particularly with regards his now-postponed luncheon date with crypto-skeptic and billionaire investor Warren Buffet. Other inclusions in the current top-ten do not have such active communities or headline-grabbing individuals associated with them but still apparently garner a lot of attention despite projects since overtaking them in terms of market capitalization. We were surprised to see IOTA and NEO, for example, still make the list. This could be because these projects generated a lot of hype at one point but have since been relatively quiet. Since ‘unwatching’ is a manual process initiated by the user, many of these followers might have entirely lost interest in these projects as their market capitalizations have dwindled relative to stronger performing digital assets.

In Hindsight

A previous version of the top ten, published in September 2017 by StockTwits itself, showed a rather different group of assets as most popular. At the time, many digital tokens issued on other blockchains made it into the top ten. The likes of Golem (GNT), OmiseGo (OMG), and Civic (CVC) have since failed to maintain the early interest surrounding them. Another interesting point about the previous StockTwits lists shows just how much interest in cryptocurrencies has surged in the almost two years since the original list was published. In September 2017, as the real bull market mania was about to kick in, the then-top three digital assets (Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin) had just shy of 40,000 combined watchers. Today, Bitcoin alone has almost 3.5 times that number. Although some of these accounts may have started following cryptocurrencies during the epic runup in price at the end of 2017 and since entirely lost interest, the huge increase in watchers should not be ignored and clearly shows growing interest in the industry amongst investors who use the platform. You might not be aware but BeInCrypto has its own StockTwits account. If you’re a user of the platform, follow us for the latest trending trends and market ideas from the BeInCrypto team.