Bitcoins rally over the last two months has seen it become a focal point of conversations around the watercooler again. The cryptocurrency market is now in full swing and Bitcoin currently stands strong with a price of $8130 (at the press time) after having started the year at just $3800. That is a massive growth of 210% over the course of barely five months, most of which happened during the last two months.
May specifically has been a rollercoaster with different days where the cryptocurrency shott up in value by over a thousand dollars. Both times, it was due to frantic trading on the early Asian markets that spurred the meteoric rise and many think it had to do with the faltering of Asian currencies in the face of an ongoing and costly trade war between the United States and China.
Big spike for the keyword "bitcoin" on Google pic.twitter.com/OgWZKeDUK8
— Joseph Young (@iamjosephyoung) May 15, 2019
Google data shows public interest in Bitcoin is increasing
Data from Google Trends shows that Bitcoin is only getting more and more popular as time goes by. Looking at the last 90 days of data, there is a definitive bump in interest around the beginning of April when Bitcoin broke through the $5000 barrier, and the conversations started around whether there would be a bottoming or if it was a false dawn.
Since then, however, the data has shown a sharp increase in the search term “bitcoin” and like it looks like the trend will continue surging upwards for the foreseeable future regardless of the price fluctuations. It is interesting to note that the NFL players are asking to be paid in cryptocurrency now (in Bitcoin in particular).
Pay me in Bitcoin.
— OKUNG 🐆 (@RussellOkung) May 14, 2019
This type of popular appeal is a sign that Bitcoin is maturing and that more and more people are slowly becoming comfortable with the idea of a cryptocurrency. It is easy to forget that Bitcoin is barely 10 years old and that there were similar bubbles and misgivings when the internet started to become mainstream.
African countries are most interested
The 90 day and 365-day trends show that most of the interest in the Bitcoin search term came from two African countries, namely Nigeria and South Africa. In top 5, only Austria is not from Africa as St Helena and Ghana take up the other two spots.
Following on from that, 6-10 are Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany Australia and Singapore. While only Switzerland can be looked at as a crypto friendly jurisdiction, it does show that the people from these ten countries are becoming ever more interested in cryptocurrency as a whole. Undoubtedly, Bitcoin has been known to be the gateway crypto for many people.
This is great news as the ICO problems of late 2017 and early 2018 turned many people off from cryptocurrencies and what this data shows is that people are willing to give cryptocurrencies another chance. The more people learn about Bitcoin and crypto, the better it will be for the entire sector and we might even see crypto take place in our daily lives sooner than many had imagined.
Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.