Google Trends: Search Queries for ‘Bitcoin’ Surpass Queries for ‘Trump’
According to Google Trends data, people are currently using the search engine to find out more about the flagship cryptocurrency, bitcoin, than they to find out more about the president of the United States, Donald Trump.
This shows how much interest in bitcoin has been increasing throughout the year, justifying the incredible userbase surge the cryptocurrency ecosystem faced. The surge was so big various cryptocurrency exchanges suffered outages amid record highs, including U.S.-based Coinbase.
The cryptocurrency’s growth has been accompanied by a growing number of top Wall Street executives weighing in on it. These include JP Morgan’s chief executive Jamie Dimon and Nobel laureates Robert Shiller, who aid the cryptocurrency will crash but “won’t go to zero,” and Joseph Stiglitz who said that bitcoin “ought to be outlawed.”
Others, like billionaire investor Carl Icahn, compared the cryptocurrency to historical bubbles: including the Mississippi bubble, the tulip bubble, and the dot-com bubble, among others. These comparisons made headlines, which in turn led to more bitcoin search queries.
The effect Bitcoin futures contracts, currently being traded on CBOE and CME, has certainly helped the cryptocurrency grow as well, as they allow institutional investors to get in on the cryptocurrency ecosystem with ease.
Data shows ‘bitcoin’ searches on Google surpassed ‘Trump’ searches in late November, when the cryptocurrency was starting to surge to a new all-time high. According to CCN.com’s price index, in late November one bitcoin was trading at around $8,000, before the cryptocurrency started surging to $16,000 by December 7, before enduring a minor correction and making its way to an all-time high over $19,000.
At press time, bitcoin is currently trading at $15,550, after recovering from a correction that saw about 40% of its value disappear in a short amount of time.
The White House on Bitcoin
Notably, we haven’t seen the U.S. president or his administration say much about the cryptocurrency this year. After two of darknet’s markets were taken down, it was revealed president Trump allegedly ordered the DOJ to do so.
Earlier this month, when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the revealed they are “being monitored” by the White House.
When pressed, she revealed a Homeland Security advisor mentioned the issue in a meeting with President Trump, but didn’t go much further. She said:
“Tom Bossert, with the Homeland Security team, an advisor to the president, has brought this up in a meeting earlier this week. I know this is something he is keeping an eye on.”
According to bitcoin bull Mike Novogratz, her response pointed to the government treating the industry favorably, as our experience so far is “that U.S: regulators have been very receptive to the whole cryptocurrency evolution.”
Excerpt: People are now searching more for the flagship cryptocurrency, than they are for the U.S. President.
