Bitcoin, Ethereum Google Searches Plunge 83% Since 2021

Searches for “bitcoin” and “ethereum” have fallen by as much as 83% since their peaks in 2021, according to data from Google Trends. After reaching an all-time high of 100 at the beginning of May 2021, Ethereum-related searches have decreased to 17, while for Bitcoin, the decrease has been 79% in the same period.

Search volumes for both cryptocurrencies are at their lowest levels since late 2020, coinciding with an ongoing bear market that has seen the price of each coin fall between 65% and 70% since record highs posted last November. The lows also come at a time when Ethereum is about to complete its long-awaited merger, which does not appear to have revived public interest in cryptocurrencies.

The bear market continues

Google is updating how it collects and records data, so direct comparisons of volumes over recent years are not 100% reliable. Nevertheless, the available data paints a bleak picture for the cryptocurrency market, to the extent that it suggests a lack of interest from retail investors and traders.

Other social data corroborates Google’s figures to varying degrees. According to BitInfoCharts, tweets per day on the topic of Bitcoin have dropped from as many as 363,000 in May 2021, to just over 100,000 now. Something similar applies to Ethereum, which saw a peak of 136,000 in March this year, only for the numbers to drop to around 40,000.

Such information does not so much indicate a breakdown in public interest as a gradual decline. That said, a closer reading of tweets data, for example, shows a partial recovery in recent months.

In the case of Ethereum, tweets per day dipped as low as 20,000 in July, only to more than double in a couple of months. On the other hand, Bitcoin has had more or less a continuous decline since March.

All of this coincides with price data, which is likely to drive public interest in cryptocurrencies. For example, bitcoin is down 56.3% since its 2022 high of about $47,459.

Other Google Trends data also supports the view of a bear market. Searches for ‘NFT’, for example, peaked at 100 in January this year, before falling to 13 today.

Similarly, searches for ‘metaverse’ have taken off, falling again from a peak in January to 18. Along with all other search data, this suggests that the market is largely going through a down cycle.

Could the merger revive interest?

The cryptocurrency market has been starved of exceptionally good news in 2022, although Ethereum’s upcoming merger is expected to be one exception. The excitement surrounding this shift to proof-of-stake has seen the price of ETH move from USD 1,435 at the end of August to 1,700 at the time of writing, a jump of around 18.5%.

Unfortunately, ETH’s relative outperformance of BTC has done little to capture the attention of the general public. Returning to the aforementioned Google Trends data, searches for ETH have also declined in the short to medium term, with 12-month peaks in June tapering off over the following months.

The situation is arguably worse for Bitcoin. Google’s data shows that over the past five years it has not regained the public interest last witnessed in December 2017, which still represents the record in terms of Google searches.

The cryptocurrency market finds itself in very unpromising macroeconomic conditions. Inflation is high in large parts of the developed world, while rising interest rates have also depressed global stock markets.

In such a context, the cryptocurrency market – including Bitcoin and Ethereum – has little hope of seeing a massive increase in public interest. This explains why Google Trends data is so low, and why Twitter data is down from previous peaks.

One ray of hope is that Merge has managed to get some of the mainstream media to speak semi-positively about cryptocurrency, or more specifically Ethereum. The normally leftist Guardian newspaper in the UK published a positive story about how Ethereum will reduce energy consumption by 99%, although it had fewer positive words for proof-of-work Bitcoin.

At the same time, some analysts and commentators have suggested that the lack of widespread search interest in crypto indicates that now is a good time to buy. In other words, it shows that the market is at rock bottom, with coins being sold at a steep discount to “true” values.