2019 was an interesting year for cryptocurrencies. Some would say it wasn’t as bad as the crypto winter in 2018 and others would note it wasn’t as great as bull run 2017. One thing’s for sure, ever since the all-time price highs, interest in cryptocurrencies has been waning. According to data from Google Trends and Yahoo Finance, searches for the terms “bitcoin” and “cryptocurrency” are much less than they were in the summer.
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Queries for ‘Bitcoin’ and ‘Cryptocurrency’ Dive in 2019
During the bull market of 2017, interest in terms like “bitcoin” and “cryptocurrency” peaked as far as searches are concerned on the Google Trends scale. After December 17, the scale touched 100 for searches for the word “bitcoin” and hasn’t reached that number since. In fact, searches for the term are currently in line with the number of searches in the spring months of 2017.
The week of May 7, 2017, Google Trends touched a 10 and today the scale is hovering at approximately nine. Search trends for “bitcoin” also saw a nine on the scale in November 2013 just after the start of that year’s bull market. During the week of May 2019, searches for the word hit a low of seven but started rising back up again during the months. Data shows that in mid-June people looking up the word “bitcoin” jumped to a high of 26.
The term “bitcoin” has a higher concentration of queries in countries like Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Austria, St. Helena, Netherlands, Slovenia, Singapore, Switzerland, and Australia. Queries closely related this year include “ethereum price,” “Binance,” “IOTA,” and “bitcoin price.” Searches for “bitcoin + news” have a different perspective as interest by region for this subject using Google Trends data over the last five years shows the top countries are Slovenia, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, and Cyprus. Queries for the term “bitcoin cash” are the top related topic and the number one related query according to Google’s five-year data, which is followed by “ethereum” and “IOTA.”
Yahoo Reports Searches for ‘Bitcoin’ 65% Fewer Than Last Year
On December 20, finance columnist for Yahoo, Edmund Heaphy, explained that “cryptocurrency searches crash 84% on Yahoo Search in 2019.” Heaphy disclosed that “new Yahoo Search data revealed,” that there were 65% less queries for the term “bitcoin” than last year. The report also noted that the research and data provider The Tie also recorded that institutional investors are losing interest in this technology.
News.Bitcoin.com reported on the Tie’s findings in October when the firm studied 85,000 headlines. “Mentions of institutional interest in bitcoin in news headlines have plummeted to a 2019 low after seeing significant growth throughout the summer,” The Tie researchers detailed. “The data used more than 85,000 unique publication headlines since October 2017.”
Can Halving Anticipation Keep Things Interesting?
Ironically, the drop in institutional interest took place when 2019 was considered a year geared toward derivatives markets like Bakkt and many firms creating custodial services for institutions. As far as cryptocurrency markets are concerned, it’s been a wild ride in 2019 as bitcoin and other digital currencies have been quite volatile.
Despite the lack of searches for the word “bitcoin” and “cryptocurrency,” queries for the term “bitcoin halving” have jumped since August. The current block subsidy for digital currencies BTC and BCH will be chopped in half by spring 2020. This event might be the key element to keeping some public interest as the halving will affect the billion-dollar mining industry a great deal.
What do you think about the waning interest as far as searches for the words “bitcoin” and “cryptocurrency”? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
Image credits: Shutterstock, Fair Use, Google Trends, Yahoo Finance.
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