Do You Feel Like Buying Bitcoins?

Previous research examined the relationship between individuals’ emotions and the impact these emotions have on financial markets. This paper made use of a lexicon-approach to analyse the relationship between Reddit comments and the bitcoin. Using an emotion lexicon and a database of 340,000 Reddit comments, models were built with the aim of establishing a link between emotions of individuals on Reddit’s Bitcoin forum and the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. To support this endeavour, literature surrounding the concept of data mining, as well as financial literature related to human behaviour was analysed. Two models were created for the trading value of the Bitcoin and its transaction volume for the years 2012 through 2015. While the results reveal a mixed success of finding a relationship between the two concepts, they also indicate that further research within the domain of emotions in financial markets should be considered.