Abstract
High-frequency crypto forecasting requires systems that are accurate, explainable, and designed for human decision-making. Bitcoin presents a unique challenge for Human-Centred AI (HCAI) due to its volatility and sensitivity to heterogeneous technical, fundamental, and sentiment signals. This paper presents an explainable multimodal framework for Bitcoin forecasting at 15-minute resolution. We align five modalities - market data, on-chain metrics, the Fear & Greed Index (FGI), news, and Reddit - onto a unified, leakage-safe 15-minute grid. We evaluate tree-based, sequential, and Multimodal Fusion Block (MFB) models for next-interval log-return prediction using chronological splits. Results show that while short-horizon prediction remains challenging, multimodal features consistently improve over structured baselines, particularly during event-driven periods. To ensure transparency, the framework integrates a dual-layer explanation system: SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) attributions combined with large language model (LLM) narratives, ensuring outputs are both technically faithful and human-accessible. This work unlocks the "black box"of complex predictive architectures, transforming opaque multimodal signals into transparent, actionable decision support for high-frequency trading.
Keywords
Bitcoin Forecasting, Deep Learning, Explainable AI, Machine Learning, Multimodal Data, SHAP
DOI Link
Publication Date
2026-02-16
Event
3rd International Conference on Human-Centred AI - Education and Practice, HCAI-ep 2026
Publication Title
HCAI-ep 2026 - Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Human Centered Artificial Intelligence - Education and Practice
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
ISBN
9798400721533
First Page
100
Last Page
106
Deposit Date
2026-05-11
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Additional Links
Recommended Citation
Badal, Dipesh; Busalim, Abdelsalam; and Lee, Donghyeok, "An Explainable Multimodal Framework for Real-Time Bitcoin Forecasting" (2026). Research Outputs: 2025-Present. 17.
https://arrow.tudublin.ie/faccomentro/17