How Information Manipulation on Social Media Influences the NFT Investors’ Behavior: A Case Study of Goblintown.Wtf

Abstract

People favor nonfungible token (NFT) because of the attribute to prove digital assets’ ownership and promote interactions. Investors are keen to buy and use NFT pictures as social media avatars and participate in online communities around NFT collections. However, information manipulation in the NFT market has led to investors significant losses. Our work explored a way to correspond social media accounts with Ethereum addresses and studied the microstructure of NFT market. Taking Goblintown.wtf as an example, we analyzed the participants, mechanism, and impact of Twitter information manipulation in the market. We found five categories of investors in the NFT market under information manipulation: primary investors, amateur investors, fanatic investors, short-term rational investors, and long-term rational investors. We argue that investors will consume their limited attention more likely when joining NFT online communities. This will lead to more complicated for them to make investment decisions rationally.