Public interest in Bitcoin in the United States has decreased to one of the lowest points in almost five years, despite growing institutional interest in the asset.
While cryptocurrency was a major issue during the presidency of Donald Trump at least into the regulatory conversation, it appears that online interest in the number one cryptocurrency has diminished since then.
According to new Google Trends data, the term “Bitcoin” had a popularity level of 18 for the week ending August 1. This is one of the lowest levels since late 2022 and 2023, when the crypto winter saw the industry experience one of the toughest periods of its history.
This decline comes in spite of increased mainstream coverage of cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology and prediction markets over the past year.
In contrast, during the first week of February of this year, there was more interest in Bitcoin on Google Trends than at any point in the past five years.
At that time, the market was in the midst of one of the largest corrections in recent years, with BTC▲$77,666.00 price falling 30% to around the $60,000 level in the wake of a mass sell-off in tech stocks.
Read More: The End of Bitcoin Halving Cycles? How Institutions Changed Crypto Markets
Because Google Trends uses a relative scale from 0 to 100, this tells us that public interest is currently less than one-fifth of what it was back in February.
The disappointing search interest is particularly baffling considering the myriad of developments that are shaping the digital asset landscape. Furthermore, the U.S. Senate remains a focus of market participants given the potential for procedural movement on the CLARITY Act as the first step toward a thorough crypto regulatory framework.
A similar leak occurred recently, which involved the security of the Coldcard hardware wallet, which was reported to have lost over 1,300 BTC in total, with little comparative jump in online search interest.
Despite a fall in retail interest, however, the general trend is in the opposite direction. A recent survey by River found that Bitcoin has overtaken gold as Americans’ investment of choice.
This report asserts there are nearly 49.6 million adults who own BTC and around 28.8 million adults who own physical gold in the US.
Read More: Why Institutions Keep Buying Bitcoin While Altcoins Keep Bleeding
From these results, we can conclude that while searches have started to decline over time, the rate of ownership and acceptance by institutions is increasing: Bitcoin’s growth in investment in the country appears to persist.
