Research Article

Uncovering coin market manipulation on X using machine learning

Volume: 17 Number: 2 June 25, 2026
TR EN

Uncovering coin market manipulation on X using machine learning

Abstract

Spam-bots have become a widespread problem due to the ease of creating accounts on the X platform. These bots are designed to automatically generate and disseminate unsolicited content, frequently for advertising purposes or events of questionable legality. A key challenge in detecting these spam-bots is their ability to create accounts rapidly, post certain volumes of content around an event, and then become dormant. This study examines spam-bot accounts created to promote cryptocurrency trading on X. We present a novel approach to obtain a spam-bot dataset for coin-related tweets, including data collection, analysis, and labeling. For data preprocessing, we applied Natural Language Processing techniques, which resulted in an imbalanced dataset. We used BERT embeddings for feature extraction and evaluated the performance of nine machine learning algorithms in detecting the tweets of spam-bot accounts. The SVM model achieves the highest cross-validated accuracy of 98.09% on the balanced dataset, produced using the SMOTE oversampling technique. On the original imbalanced dataset, Logistic Regression has the highest accuracy at 96.46%. The cross-validated accuracy of SVM is further improved through hyperparameter tuning, resulting in 99.70%.

Keywords

References

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Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

Machine Learning (Other), Natural Language Processing

Journal Section

Research Article

Publication Date

June 25, 2026

Submission Date

September 25, 2025

Acceptance Date

March 30, 2026

Published in Issue

Year 2026 Volume: 17 Number: 2

APA
Özbay, Z. N., Uğur, A., & Dalkılıç, M. E. (2026). Uncovering coin market manipulation on X using machine learning. Dicle Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi Mühendislik Dergisi, 17(2). https://doi.org/10.24012/dumf.1789337
AMA
1.Özbay ZN, Uğur A, Dalkılıç ME. Uncovering coin market manipulation on X using machine learning. DUJE. 2026;17(2). doi:10.24012/dumf.1789337
Chicago
Özbay, Zehra Nur, Aybars Uğur, and Mehmet Emin Dalkılıç. 2026. “Uncovering Coin Market Manipulation on X Using Machine Learning”. Dicle Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi Mühendislik Dergisi 17 (2). https://doi.org/10.24012/dumf.1789337.
EndNote
Özbay ZN, Uğur A, Dalkılıç ME (June 1, 2026) Uncovering coin market manipulation on X using machine learning. Dicle Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi Mühendislik Dergisi 17 2
IEEE
[1]Z. N. Özbay, A. Uğur, and M. E. Dalkılıç, “Uncovering coin market manipulation on X using machine learning”, DUJE, vol. 17, no. 2, June 2026, doi: 10.24012/dumf.1789337.
ISNAD
Özbay, Zehra Nur - Uğur, Aybars - Dalkılıç, Mehmet Emin. “Uncovering Coin Market Manipulation on X Using Machine Learning”. Dicle Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi Mühendislik Dergisi 17/2 (June 1, 2026). https://doi.org/10.24012/dumf.1789337.
JAMA
1.Özbay ZN, Uğur A, Dalkılıç ME. Uncovering coin market manipulation on X using machine learning. DUJE. 2026;17. doi:10.24012/dumf.1789337.
MLA
Özbay, Zehra Nur, et al. “Uncovering Coin Market Manipulation on X Using Machine Learning”. Dicle Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi Mühendislik Dergisi, vol. 17, no. 2, June 2026, doi:10.24012/dumf.1789337.
Vancouver
1.Zehra Nur Özbay, Aybars Uğur, Mehmet Emin Dalkılıç. Uncovering coin market manipulation on X using machine learning. DUJE. 2026 Jun. 1;17(2). doi:10.24012/dumf.1789337