Google searches for the term “bitcoin” have jumped 33% over the past seven days, shortly after the flagship cryptocurrency hit its high of over $10,000 so far this year.
As first spotted by a user on Twitter, after bitcoin hit the $10,000 mark earlier this month searches for the cryptocurrency jumped.
33% wow pic.twitter.com/FK2Tnw2wVP
— Hernz (@hernzzzzzz) February 10, 2020
While it’s impossible to say with certainty what was behind BTC’s rise over $10,000, some analysts believe the cryptocurrency’s price rose over fears surrounding the coronavirus’ impact on businesses throughout the world. This could have seen investors pour money into bitcoin while looking for safe havens.
Others claim it was nothing but fear of missing out (FOMO) starting to get to traders as the 2020 block reward halving approaches. The event will block rewards drop from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC per block, reminding crypto users of BTC’s scarcity.
At press time, CryptoCompare data shows bitcoin is now trading close to $9,800 after suffering a minor correction. Over the past 30 days the cryptocurrency is still up over 20% after starting the year slightly above the $7,000 mark.
Analysis of the jump in Google searches for bitcoin also showed that some term breaking out involved schemes promising users they can double their BTC, with one search query surging being for “bitcoin price x2 double your btc.”
It’s worth pointing out that in 2017 a study conducted by search engine marketing agency SEMrush found that the price of bitcoin had a 91% correlation with the volume of Google search requests for searches associated with the cryptocurrency.
The study used a database of 120 million U.S. keyword searches related to bitcoin, and showed that the price of BTC largely rose and fell in tandem with then umber of search requests for terms like “bitcoin,” “bitcoin price,” and “bitcoin value.”
Featured image via Pixabay.
