Bitcoin’s 17′ rally synched with the number of online searches for ‘bitcoin’

By Camilla Hodgson

LONDON — The price of bitcoin in 2017 correlated almost perfectly with how often the term was searched for online, according to new analysis by intelligence firm SEMrush.

Over the year, online searches for “bitcoin” increased by 1,258%, and in December the term was searched for 17 times more often than the dollar and 101 times more often than the euro. The price of bitcoin moved alongside search volumes almost exactly, the analysis found — the so-called “correlation coefficient” was 95%.

As bitcoin soared in value, rising over 1,000% against the dollar over 2017, investors and financial executives expressed increasing interest and concerns in cryptocurrencies. In response to concerns that cryptocurrencies may be used to facilitate financial crimes and launder money, European and UK authorities are planning to crack down on bitcoin.

The relationship between ethereum’s price and the volume of internet search traffic for the term was similarly close to that of bitcoin, with a correlation coefficient of 90%.

From April last year, cryptocurrency markets attracted more traffic than stock exchanges, and grew 229% in December alone. Nearly 30% of searches came from the US and nearly 10% came from Russia.

Over the year, bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin were the most searched for cryptocurrencies. But the analysis found bitcoin was losing ground to other cryptocurrencies, losing 25% of its search volume throughout 2017, and that litecoin and ripple started to gain ground on ethereum from November.

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