- Google searches for Bitcoin are still at levels seen in May 2017
- Bitcoin’s recovery to $14,000 hasn’t been enough to get interest levels back up again
- Mainstream media coverage is the key driver of Bitcoin interest
Bitcoin might be getting crypto fans hot and bothered with its performance this year, but it seems the wider world doesn’t care as much – Google searches for ‘Bitcoin’ are less popular than they were in May 2017. This fact shows that, despite Bitcoin’s recovery to $14,000, interest in the digital gold is still the same as it was before the bull run of 2017, showing that we are still very early in the cycle.
Bitcoin Searches Have Never Recovered
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google searches for Bitcoin hit their all time high in December 2017 before falling away dramatically throughput 2018 as Bitcoin’s price corrected 85%. Despite a couple of spikes up to November 2017 levels in the intervening years, generally speaking interest in Bitcoin has never really recovered, despite the cryptocurrency staging a remarkable recovery to $14,000 on two separate occasions, once in July 2019 and again over the weekend.
As a result of this lack of wider interest, Google searches for Bitcoin are still at levels we saw in May 2017, before the 2017 bull run even happened. The Bitcoin price was engaged in a year-long positive arc from the start of 2017 before swiftly doubling in price that December, precisely when mainstream media began reporting on it. As a result, Google searches for Bitcoin went as parabolic as the price action for that month alone
Sir, Wen Mainstream Media?
The question then becomes at what point the Google searches might pick up again, seeing as they are still at surprisingly low levels despite Bitcoin approaching the same price levels that occurred during the last spike in interest.
To answer this we need to know when mainstream media will start covering Bitcoin again with the same appetite. This of course is not an exact science, but it is a question we have already tried to tackle – in 2017 it took Bitcoin breaching $10,000 to get mainstream media interested, and with three years and with a post-$10,000 record recently set, it seems only Bitcoin breaking all time highs of $20,000 will be enough to get the same kind of coverage as in 2017, and therefore the same amount of Bitcoin interest among the wider population.
However, this may still not be enough, given that a certain virus may still be doing the rounds when that time comes, combined with some potential presidential election fallout. Were this to be the case, we might be looking at a $30,000 level before the media cares again, with the resulting interest spike potentially taking Bitcoin close to a $50,000 blow off top.
