Cryptocurrency crowned as most popular among influencer discussions on Twitter

Rising inflation and the impact of COVID-19 has massively shifted investors’ as well as public companies and banks’ focus to cryptocurrencies. As a result, despite the volatility, digital assets have garnered much popularity on social media.

According to data and analytics company GlobalData’s PayPal Holdings Inc Influencer Platform’s data, influencer conversations on Twitter related to PayPal surged by 500% quarter-on-quarter in Q4 2020.

The reason for this upward graph can be credited to PayPal’s new service which allowed its users to buy, sell and accept cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin through the PayPal digital wallet.

Additionally, the company reported a revenue of US$5.46bn for the quarter ending September 2020, a figure up by 25% compared to the previous year. PayPal’s total payment volume also surged by 36% year-on-year to a whopping US$247bn.

Commenting on this report, Influencer Analyst at GlobalData Smitarani Tripathy said:

“In October, there was a dramatic rise in influencer conversations around PayPal, when the online payments company received the conditional Bitlicense from New York State’s Department of Financial Services (DFS).”

Tripathy believes that the payment firm’s early announcement on the license is what caused the escalation in crypto’s popularity.

“The service was originally supposed to be launched from early 2021. However, the company advanced it to November 2020. This led to a conversation spike in November,” she added.

PayPal is hardly the only firm boosting crypto in its processes. American financial services Square witnessed US$50m worth cash turn into Bitcoin. Experts at Citibank forecast Bitcoin’s price to cross US$300,000 by the end of 2021 deeming it as the gold of the 21st-century. 

Among all cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin seems to be the king of coins on Twitter as BTC accounted for 50.71% of all mentions in 2020.