BITCOIN has had a fairly uneventful week with the market continuing to move sideways as crypto Google searches dropping. So why is the drop in bitcoin search traffic actually good news for investors?
In the first few days of 2018, the price of BTC climbed above $17,000 but today, it’s just above $7,000 with some investors expecting the value to continue falling.
At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency token is at $7,706.43 at 10am on June 7 - up 1.23percent on the last 24 hours.
Most of the other major cryptocurrencies are also in the green this morning - with Ethereum up 0.82 percent to $609 and Ripple up 1.75 percent to $0.68.
This year has seen bitcoin struggling to maintain its momentum of the previous year, when the token hit highs of $20,000 in a huge surge for the coin.
Coinciding with the decline in BTC’s value, CNBS reported that Google searches for the term ‘bitcoin’ have plummeted by 75 percent since January.
Google Trends assigns numerical values to represent search interest over time, with the highest value being 100.
On January 1, bitcoin's popularity measure in the United Staes was 37. By June 2, it dropped to just 9.
Globally, the search term dipped from 44 on January 1 to just 11 on June 4.
This shows those who are looking to make quick cash from the cryptocurrency have lost interest.
While this is bad news for momentum traders, it is good news for investors as they can buy BTC at lower levels while the hype is out of the markets.
However, some analysts believe the drop in bitcoin searches could spell trouble for the cryptocurrency.
DataTrek Research co-founder Nicholas Colas said his company uses Google Trends "to track search queries for 'bitcoin' as a proxy for potential new buyers.
“Bitcoin needs a new narrative in order to reestablish global attention."
Professional opinions are divided over the future of the crypto.
While Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak believes that bitcoin is digital gold, investment manager Jim Chanos has always been sceptical