Public Perceptions of Facebook’s Libra Digital Currency Initiative: Text Mining on Twitter

Large corporations in the financial and technology sectors are increasingly interested digital currencies, central bank currencies being actively researched around globe. In this study, we analyzed public discourse conducted through social media platform Twitter concerning Facebook’s Libra currency initiative. Text mining of tweets posted during one-month period official announcement project revealed that majority have a neutral sentiment toward proposed currency. However, those with positive attitudes outnumbered perceiving initiative as negative, negative mainly stemmed from anger anxiety. Through topical modeling analysis using latent Dirichlet allocation, identified eight themes related to Facebook Libra. The study provides an early exploratory assessment factors facilitating hindering user adoption one most important practical applications blockchain technology.