Bitcoin has seeped through the conversation of everyday people as the world’s number one cryptocurrency made noise following its parabolic price hike that reaches almost $14,000 last week.
The popularity of bitcoin among people around the world was still affirmed even when the ecstatic high did an Olympic nosedive of an unsettling 22% on Thursday last week, or $3,150, to $10,700, according to FactSet data, based on bitcoin futures the US: BTCM19 prices trading on CME Group.
But researchers from media analytics company SemRush found an interesting correlation between the searches on bitcoin and its prices. This signifies that there are a growing interest and curiosity about bitcoin and the crypto money. Although, it is still unclear whether people becoming more interested in bitcoin is driving the spike in its prices, or it is the other way around.
Bitcoin searches on Google, for example, between June 19 and June 26 have risen by more than 158% (see chart above), according to researchers.
“We also identified that there’s an 80.8% correlation ratio between Google searches and bitcoin price,” from June 19 to June 26, wrote Olga Andrienko, head of global marketing at SEMrush. A 100% positive correlation means that two variables are moving in perfect sync.
On its peak, Bitcoin futures BTCM19, +10.85% hit an intraday high on CME Group Inc. CME, -3.17% at $13,680, and isn’t far from that level last week at $13,330 in afternoon action, according to FactSet data.
The cryptocurrency has now grown more than 60% in June alone. The digital coin created back in 2009, has taken its market value, the total of all bitcoin’s in circulation, to $237 billion and Wednesday new high makes Bitcoin value represent 62.6% of all digital currencies tracked by data site CoinMarketCap.com.
By comparison, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.67% is down 0.6% so far this week, with a year-to-date rise of nearly 14%. The S&P 500 index SPX, +0.77% is on pace for a 0.8% weekly loss and a 16.7% gain over the past six months, while the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.75% is on track to shed about 0.8%, with a more than 20% gain so far in 2019.
