APU Student Wins RIPC 2021 Gold Award

Using machine learning and deep learning to predict short term Bitcoin price and trend classification

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Bitcoin has indeed been branded as a ‘financial revolution’ by many and established itself as a major decentralised cryptocurrency source.

Although many studies have been done on Bitcoin network analysis, only a limited number of studies have been done on Bitcoin price prediction.

Evan Millikan, a final-year student of the B.Sc. (Hons) Computer Science with a specialism in Data Analytics programme, developed a project called Bitcoin Vision for his final year project, which aims to predict short term Bitcoin price and trend classification.

Initially, the project was based upon the idea of stock price prediction but later switched to Bitcoin price prediction. His research uses machine learning and deep learning approaches to predict the price of Bitcoin.

Evan, who is from Pontianak, Indonesia, had previously competed in a number of competitions.

Using his final year project, he was able to win the Gold Award under the category of Degree Final Year Project Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics with the help of his supervisors, Dr Preethi Subramanian and Ms Minnu Helen Joseph.

The judges of MNNF Network's Final Year Project & Postgraduate: Research & Innovation Poster Competition (RIPC) Series 2/2021 were impressed by his project poster, "Bitcoin Vision — Using Machine Learning and Deep Learning to Predict Short Term Bitcoin Price and Trend Classification."

MNNF Network specialises in academic events, training, and development solutions that help to optimise human capital growth in organisations while maintaining high quality and ethical standards in education, training, and development.

According to Evan, Bitcoin Vision data will be utilised to train the algorithms so that they can understand a trend or pattern in Bitcoin's past price.

He also added a few parameters from Bitcoin blockchain information to allow the models to predict Bitcoin's price better and more accurately in the future. 

“I decided to explore something new like cryptocurrency, and I selected Bitcoin since it is the most popular at the moment,” he said.

He revised the idea multiple times with Dr Preethi and Ms Minnu until they landed at this final project.

The notion is that a Bitcoin price prediction model that can provide insight into Bitcoin's price one day in the future, allowing Bitcoin traders to make smarter decisions.

“I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Preethi and Ms Minnu for their constant support in pointing me in the right direction.

“Since I learned the most of what I know through the internet, the information provided there can often be contradictory, because different people have different methods of accomplishing things,” he explained, adding, “In this situation, if I find a contradictory solution to my problem, I will usually try to consult with them to see which course of action is the best.”

After graduating, Evan has two objectives. The first is to search for jobs in Indonesia, and the second is to publish his final year project's Bitcoin Vision in an international journal. 

“If I find something new to contribute to this project, I believe I will continue to develop it.”