Who Are The Biggest Bitcoin and Ethereum Influencers?

Community tracking tool Hive.one has updated its algorithm to better reflect the biggest Bitcoin, and Ethereum, influencers on Twitter, it said in a post last week.

If you’ve spent a while searching "#bitcoin" or "#ethereum" on Twitter, the vastness of the social space and the seemingly infinite number of self-proclaimed “experts” may have dazzled you. But Hive.one aims to solve just that, by building out social ‘clusters’ and allotting trust metrics to popular users (who are followed by members of that cluster) for helping newcomers and veterans alike to better navigate the social space and know who to trust.

Hive.one calculates the influence scores using a Twitter account’s total “following.” This is similar to how search engine giant Google builds out its own word clusters, giving users faster and more accurate search results.

“The more influential your new follower is and the fewer other accounts it follows, the bigger the boost to your score,” Hive.one explained in a post.

The Hive.one system is now refined even further. The algorithm update last week—its ‘biggest’ one yet—builds on the various shortcomings of the previous versions, such as decreased accuracy and the use of manual intervention, and updates social clusters much faster than before.

The newer version of Hive.one can also quickly add a prominent individual who speaks about Bitcoin and allocate a trust score to them. This wasn't present in the previous version, which, for example, took several weeks to add enterprise software firm MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, who holds nearly $800 worth of the asset across his company and personal accounts—and has become a true Bitcoin shaman.

So which accounts take the cake for being the most trust, followed, and accurate? On the Bitcoin side, there’s Bitcoin technology firm Blockstream founder Adam Back, engineer Pieter Wuille, and developer Pierre Rochard (who caused the SupplyGate controversy earlier this year) as the top three.

Their leading Ethereum counterparts are protocol creator Vitalik Buterin, content creator Evan Van Ness, and developer Hudson Jameson.

Some accounts have risen the ranks quite literally. For Bitcoin, the ranking of a pseudonymous profile called “Psychedelic Bart” has jumped 175 places to 102 (even above Monero maintainer Ricardo Spagni). On the other hand, lesser-known Ethereum developers Paul Hauner (now 61st) and Jacek Sieka (now 99th) have jumped 250 and 354 places respectively from their earlier rankings.

Meanwhile, Hive.one suggests to not take the rankings as a final word. “We do NOT tell you who to listen to and what to trust. Instead, we map various groups and show you who are their members, who they pay attention to and what information they consider credible” the firm cautions. So best to take with a pinch of salt then.