Is the hottest trend over? Google search popularity of "Bitcoin" plummeted by 80%

Remember how crazy people were when Bitcoin was hot last year? At that time, the number of searches for "Bitcoin" on Google skyrocketed. However, now that the price has plummeted, people seem to have lost interest in it.

Google Trends shows that the popularity of searching for "Bitcoin" on Google has plummeted by 80%, and the relevant index has fallen to 16%, returning to the level of October last year.

In mid-December, less than three months ago, the search popularity soared to 100%. That was shortly after Thanksgiving. Wall Street News mentioned that many Americans were newcomers who rushed into the market after hearing recommendations during Thanksgiving dinners. There were 70-year-old buyers who had no idea what Bitcoin was.

In addition to the decrease in the number of searches on search engines, news about Bitcoin in major financial media has also become less frequent. It seems to have become a thing of the past.

"The trend shown by this indicator is almost consistent with the trend of Bitcoin prices in the past 90 days," CNBC quoted Nick Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research, as saying, "By observing the number of Google searches for Bitcoin, we can sense investors' interest in it."

In the past 12 months, the price of Bitcoin has shown a trend of rising and falling, soaring from $1,200 in early March last year to $19,843 on December 15, a full 15-fold increase. Then, the price began to plummet, plummeting to around $7,000 in just 7 weeks, and recently rebounded to above $10,600.

The last time people were as tepid about Bitcoin as they are now was in October last year, when the price of Bitcoin was less than $5,000.

"There has been a significant drop in searches for Bitcoin. So the level of interest will definitely tell you where there was an important breakthrough in the price of Bitcoin and then where there was a significant pullback," said Nick Colas.

Even Koreans who were keen on speculating in cryptocurrencies seem to have lost interest. A typical example is that the "Kimchi premium" of Bitcoin has disappeared. This means that the price of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin in South Korea is much higher than that in overseas markets, and at its highest, it has even reached 50%.

In addition, the trading volume of Bitcoin has also shown a sudden decline. In recent times, the average daily trading volume and the seven-day average trading volume of Bitcoin have hovered at the lowest level in two years.

On February 26, the trading volume of Bitcoin was only 180,000, and the trading volume on March 4 was similar.

Data from Blockchain.info shows that the seven-day average price of Bitcoin fell from an all-time high of nearly 350,000 on December 16, 2017 to a low of between 150,000 and 155,000 in February 2018.

Weekly Bitcoin trading volume on trading platform Localbitcoins has fallen below 6,000 transactions for the first time since February 2014.

It is generally believed that the surge in bitcoin prices last year was mainly caused by a large number of people following the trend and speculating. The slump in prices this year has cast a shadow over the market.

Charles Morris, chief investment officer at Newscape Capital Group, described volume as a signal of volatility in price action. "A hype cycle just went through, and now it's cooling off. We may be entering a bear market."

The company's founder, Kyle Samani, believes that the decrease in transaction volume reflects that many businesses no longer use Bitcoin as a means of payment, and emphasized that "merchants, payment processors and online gambling are moving away from Bitcoin."

Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist of the IMF and professor at Harvard University, predicts that Bitcoin is more likely to fall to $100 rather than rise to $100,000 within 10 years.

"Basically, if you take out the potential for money laundering and tax evasion, the actual use of Bitcoin as a transaction tool is very small," said Kenneth Rogoff.

In his view, government regulation will cause the price of Bitcoin to fall.