User Perceptions of Cryptocurrency Attacks – Extended Abstract

This work is the first study on the perceptions of social media users about cryptocurrency attacks. The doublespending or 51% attack being the most fundamental attack on cryptocurrencies, it is the focus of this study. As a first step, we create a first-of-its-kind comprehensive list of 31 events of 51% attacks on various proof-of-work cryptocurrencies, showing that these events are quite common. This list contradicts the general perception about the security of cryptocurrencies, particularly portrayed in the Executive Order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a Digital Asset Stockpile in the US. We design the methodologies for our new study of user perceptions around these attacks. We create datasets containing tweets from the time of the attack events, and compare them with benchmark data from normal times. We define parameters for profiling these datasets based on user perceptions – sentiments and emotions. We study the variation of these perception profiles, when a cryptocurrency is under attack and the benchmark otherwise, between multiple attack events of the same cryptocurrency, and between different cryptocurrencies. Our results confirm some expected overall behaviour and reactions while providing nuanced insights that may not be obvious or may even be considered surprising. Our code and datasets are publicly accessible.