Though the world’s interest in cryptocurrencies dramatically waned since the end of the bull market, it stayed relatively flat this year, according to search engine data from Google.
On Google Trends’ scale of 0-100—where 100 denotes the highest interest in a search term for a given period—data pulled from the site shows that the term “cryptocurrencies” peaked the week of June 16 this year, but by this month had settled back down to 44, roughly where it was a year ago.
Searches for similar terms, such as “bitcoin,” reveal the same trend, with highs during the same week in June. Unsurprisingly, interest levels tend to match the price of Bitcoin, which has been on a downhill run since its 2019 peak of $13,796 in July, to its current price, $7175.
Yahoo reports the same trends
The data seems to be consistent across other platforms. Recent reporting from Yahoo Finance, for instance, found that searches for “cryptocurrencies” on Yahoo in 2019 dropped by 84 percent compared to last year, and that there were 65 percent fewer queries for “Bitcoin” which suggested “that the waning interest in digital currencies among investors is mirrored by the general public,” Yahoo reported.
Yahoo Finance also cited data from cryptocurrency data analytics firm the Tie, which found that news headlines mentioning institutional interest in Bitcoin hit a yearly low in October.
Big in Nigeria
Still, it’s not all ho-hum across the globe. The Google Trends data shows that certain regions were far more interested in cryptocurrencies this year. Uganda and Nigeria, both countries with weak currencies, have peak interest worldwide; Nigeria also showed peak interest for the term “bitcoin.”