Unsurprisingly, Bitcoin was the most mentioned cryptocurrency on Telegram between December 14 and December 21 — but the next two most mentioned coins were a little more surprising.

The three most mentioned cryptocurrencies on Telegram during this timespan were:

Bitcoin (BTC) Waves (WAVES) EOS (EOS)

Together, they accounted for 47.2 percent of all mentions of cryptocurrency.

A mention occurs simply when the cryptocurrency is used by name somewhere on Telegram.

With the largest market capitalization of any cryptocurrency, it makes sense that Bitcoin would take first place. What’s surprising, however, is the inclusion of Waves and EOS in the top three.

While EOS is ranked in the top five for market capitalization (as of December 23), XRP, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash all have significantly higher market caps. Furthermore, Waves isn’t even included in the top 10. As of December 23, it was ranked all the way down at number 19.

In fact, for each day between December 14 and 21, both EOS and Waves received over 30 percent more mentions than the day prior.

Possible Explanations

Market capitalization may have nothing to do with how often a cryptocurrency is mentioned or discussed on Telegram. However, there are other variables which may offer a better explanation for each of these three cryptos.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin is the historic leader of cryptocurrencies. It was the first cryptocurrency released and paved the way for the introduction of other first-generation cryptocurrencies. Furthermore, it laid the basis for the introduction of second-generation smart contract platforms like Waves and EOS as well as third-generation tokens built on those platforms. If Bitcoin wasn’t ranked first, that would come as a shock.

Waves

Waves made headlines several times during the week.

On December 18, Waves and Tokenization Standards (TSA) announced a cooperation agreement with each other. The following day, Waves announced that over $120 million had been privately raised for the Vostok Project, a new addition to the Waves Ecosystem. Furthermore, on the same day, Waves announced that it would be trading on cryptocurrency exchange Huobi.

EOS

The reason for the mentions of EOS is a little harder to pin down, but there are several phenomena that likely played a role.

First, during this period, the number of individuals using decentralized applications (DApps) daily on EOS increased to more than double those using Ethereum. Furthermore, the Chinese Ministries of Industry and Information Technology released its 8th blockchain technology assessment index in which EOS retained the number 1 spot out of 28 cryptos ranked.

Correlating these events to Telegram mentions offers a plausible explanation as to why Waves and EOS mentions increased to their respective second and third positions.

Conclusion

Mentions of cryptocurrencies on Telegram, and likely elsewhere, cannot be correlated to market capitalization. Instead, we must look toward other variables.

Bitcoin’s historic dominance is enough to explain its first-place ranking. However, such historic dominance cannot be used to explain why Waves or EOS were mentioned so often. Nonetheless, there are corollary events for both that can help explain this.

For Waves, these included announcements of new cooperation agreements, private funds raised for new projects, and new exchanges to host the crypto. Regarding EOS, we can look at the increase in daily Dapp users and rankings on the Chinese blockchain assessment index. These, however, may not be the only corollary events. There may be others.

Do you think there were other factors that caused the increase in mentions of Waves and EOS on Telegram? If so, what might they be?