Cryptocurrency awareness and attitudes in Turkey: An evaluation with sentiment and statistical analysis

Money is one of the most important inventions in human history. When we look at the development process of money, it first appeared as various products in the barter system, then it evolved into metal form with the use of precious metals in different sizes and values In order to use as a payment instrument, money then evolved into paper form with the enhancements of the writing system. In addition to being used to carry on commercial activities today, money also represents the prestige of states in the economic arena. With technology triggering change in every field, money has also become electronic forms. Although the digitalization of money provides a certain speed and time, especially in banking processes. These advantages, which are provided by the increasing transaction volume and legal obligations that must be complied with, have been replaced by its cumbersomeness. After the economic crisis in 2008, the decentralized currency, called Bitcoin crypto money, was introduced by the person or people named Satoshi Nakamoto in order to eliminate this cumbersomeness. The aim of this study is to measure the level of awareness and attitudes about these decentralized currencies in Turkey and to measure the effects of demographic variables in forming these aware nesses and attitudes. In this process, Turkish residents' attitudes and variety of behaviors towards this crypto currency have been analyzed. In the current study, sentiment analysis was performed on Turkish crypto currency tweets obtained from Twitter, and descriptive and inferential statistical analyzes were performed on the data obtained through the survey study. In the sentiment analysis, we observe that the majority of the tweets were positive, and as a result of the statistical analyzes, the level of awareness and attitudes towards crypto money was high and it was affected by demographic factors such as education and income levels.