Mati Greenspan, the senior market analyst at eToro, a leading social trading platform, has revealed that Google searches for bitcoin (BTC), have increased due to the current rally which appears to have run out of steam.

Greenspan pointed out that cryptocurrency trading volumes have started to pick up, however both trading activity and online searches about cryptocurrencies are “nowhere near” what they were when digital asset prices recorded record-level highs in late 2017.

Greenspan, a licensed portfolio manager, noted that “volumes across” digital asset exchanges (during the last 3 months) are “at their highest levels” since April 2018. Bitcoin usage is “also really high at the moment”, the former financial investments advisor at Ava FX mentioned. In fact, bitcoin usage is “near the highest it’s ever been at 3.87 transactions per second (TPS)”, Greenspan wrote.

Moreover, the experienced market analyst said that BTC usage rates had been “rising steadily throughout the bear market” as bitcoin adoption continued to increase even when crypto prices were down considerably from their record level highs.

“Emerging Markets” Experienced Greatest Increase In Bitcoin Usage

As many other researchers have observed, Greenspan tweeted:

Bitcoin usage is especially high in emerging markets where the local economy is less stable.

Indeed, countries experiencing hyperinflation such as Venezuela have seen bitcoin trading volumes explode to all-time highs. Venezuelans seem to increasingly be turning to cryptoassets, in order to preserve their wealth as the Bolivar (the nation’s fiat currency) has become practically worthless due to extreme inflation.

Notably, volumes on the popular peer-to-peer (P2P) LocalBitcoins exchange were 157x greater (on February 11th, 2019) than Venezuela’s largest stock exchange. Today (February 21st, 2019), Greenspan pointed out that global trading volumes on LocalBitcoins “have been rising lately” when compared to the “noticeable dip” during the prolonged bear market (which is still not over).

Most Millennials More Confident In Crypto Than Traditional Stocks

On February 19th, eToro published the results of its survey which shows that most millennials appear to be more confident in cryptocurrencies, instead of buying traditional stocks. Interestingly, most or 71% of the young investors responding to the survey said they “would invest in crypto if it was offered by traditional financial institutions.”

Over 90% of millennial crypto traders that participated in eToro’s survey said “they would invest more money in [digital assets] if [they] were offered by traditional financial institutions such as TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, or Charles Schwab.”