CoinTor

Google Searches for ‘Bitcoin’ Drop to Five Month Low

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Google searches using the keyword Bitcoin are down since the manic run of buying in late December. This marks the lowest interest based on Google trends since Bitcoin traded at $5,000.

Google Searches Match With Market Prices

Analysts who use Google searches as an indicator of market trends have noted that since the New Year searches with the word Bitcoin have dropped about 80%. This is with fluctuations as the market dropped and then has slowly regained some of its value.

Nick Colas, DataTrek Research co-founder, who called Bitcoin “the gateway drug of cryptocurrency” on CNBC’s “Fast Money” charted the spike and decline of Google searches related to Bitcoin and correlated it with trade activity.

He went on to say that a lot of movement in the market now is lateral as opposed to new investor money. That is investors taking money from Bitcoin and putting it into Ethereum or Litecoin and that the Google search percentages reinforce that by showing gains in those coin names used in searches as the market cap increases.

“So far (google) it’s been a very reliable indicator, it showed us the way up and now it’s showing us the way back down.”

Stated Colas, he added that based on the trends he doesn’t see a price recovery in the near future since he doesn’t see a rebound in search percentages.

Google Searches Can’t Predict all Investment

Though Google searches may closely represent retail investor interest (single person or small groups) and movements, it doesn’t necessarily chart the interests of institutional investors.

Analysts who follow institutional money are seeing hedge funds putting aside large amounts of revenue for crypto investment while they continue to research and study trends in the markets.

One analyst from “Fast Money” called out for Bitcoin to skyrocket again once the institutional funds turn the corner and start to invest heavily in the crypto market, noting there are only $22 million wallets (cryptocurrency storage devices) in the world but a lot more brokerages.

The opposition argues that individual interest in Bitcoin can’t be charted the way traditional market investor interest can be. That there is a large audience, or arguably, a generation of potential investors that would have no need to Google ‘Bitcoin’.

Those who are already interested and invested are going directly to Reddit sub-threads that deal specifically with what they want to know or are following their advisers on Twitter directly. This may be a case of using outdated tools to try and predict a market that has since its inception been unpredictable to analysts who grew up studying trends in the fiat marketplace.