## 3 Proposed Methodology
### Data Collection and Preprocessing  
In the data collection phase, we gather market and social media data related to a selected group of cryptocurrencies. Our focus is on a heterogeneous set of representative cryptocurrencies chosen from the most popular ones. As shown in Table 2, these cryptocurrencies have been categorized into four distinct categories based on their characteristics:  
* _High Capitalization (HC)_: this category includes cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are highly popular and have a significant impact on the world of cryptocurrencies. * _Solid Project (SP)_: it includes cryptocurrencies backed by a robust project, although they may be less popular. Examples include Solana and Conflux, which form the foundation for various types of blockchains, as well as projects like The Sandbox, which is associated with the metaverse and NFT-related initiatives. * _Influential Meme (IM)_: it includes coins that do not rely on solid projects (i.e., meme coins). Despite their lower capitalization and the absence of substantial projects, they have a significant influence on the world of cryptocurrencies due to their history and popularity on social media. * _Volatile Meme (VM)_: this category comprises cryptocurrencies created purely for speculative purposes, characterized by high volatility and substantial price fluctuations within short time periods. For each coin considered, we collected historical data on market performance from the CoinMarketCap website ([[https://coinmarketcap.com/](https://coinmarketcap.com/)]([https://coinmarketcap.com/](https://coinmarketcap.com/)), accessed on 1 November 2023), which provides information about price fluctuations (hourly, daily, weekly), market capitalization, daily traded amounts, and volumes of coins that are circulating in the market. Specifically, we gathered comprehensive market data for a selected group of cryptocurrencies spanning from January 2021 to March 2023. Cryptocurrency prices have been tracked over time in Tether (USDT), which is a stable coin designed to maintain a fixed 1:1 ratio with the US dollar. The analysis of market data was of great use in evaluating some key aspects of the relationships existing among the different cryptocurrencies, as discussed in the following. Subsequently, the posts published by users talking about these coins were collected on social media platforms. In particular, we collected a large set of tweets published in the considered period, using the Twitter APIs with a set of keywords associated with the considered coins. Each collected tweet contains specific attributes, including the timestamp indicating when the tweet was posted, textual content, hashtags used, the author's username, the number of followers, and a flag indicating the user's account verification status, \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l l} \hline \hline
**Category** & **Acronym** & **Cryptocurrencies** \\ \hline
**High** & & Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), Polkadot (DOT), \\
**Capitalization** & **HC** & Solana (SQL), Cosmos (ATOM), Stellar (XLM), Avalanche (AVAX), \\  & & Tron (TRX), Litecoin (LTC) \\  & & Conflux (CFX), Stacks (STX), Fantom (FTM), Quant (QNT) Loopring (LRC), \\
**Solid** & **SP** & The sandbox (SAND), Gala (GALA), Lido Dao (LDO), Cronos (CRON), \\
**Project** & & Zillia (ZIL), Chilie (CHZ), Neo (NEO), Vethor Token (VTHO), Bancor (BNT), \\  & & The Graph (GRT) \\
**Influent** & & Dogecoin (DOCE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Decentraland (MANA) \\
**Meme** & & Babydoge Coin (BabyDoge), Floki (Toki), Catecoin (CATE), \\
**Volatile** & **VM** & Dogelon Mars (ELON), Volt Inu v2 (VOLT), Deijtaru Tsuka (TSUKA), \\  & & Kishu Inu (KISHU), Shiba Predator (SHIBAP), Pitbull (PIT), Akita Inu (AKITA) \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: List of cryptocurrencies used for the analysis. enhancing the reliability of the collected information.