Search interest in Bitcoin’s death has returned to record highs as the price of the leading cryptocurrency plummets.
For the week ending June 18, the search query ‘bitcoin dead’ registered 93 points on Google Trends. That is just one point short of the maximum reading recorded in December 2017.
Leading among the countries were Canada, Singapore and Australia, with the United States and Nigeria — much more populous — trailing.
In the Russian-language segment of the internet, the query ‘the crash of Bitcoin’ also showed a spike in popularity. However the weekly score was almost half of the period from 28 January to 3 February 2018 — 53 points versus a maximum of 100.
On June 13, the price of the leading cryptocurrency crashed below $23,000. At the same time, the major crypto-lending platform Celsius Network paused withdrawals, trading and transfers between accounts ‘due to extreme market conditions’.
Subsequently, reports emerged of possible insolvency of the hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. Co-founder Su Zhu did not directly confirm the rumors, but said they are ‘solving the problems’.
One of Asia’s largest crypto-lenders, Babel Finance, also announced a suspension of payments and withdrawals.
On June 18, Bitcoin prices fell below the $20,000 level.
Despite the surge in popularity of pessimistic queries about cryptocurrencies, they lag far behind interest in the asset. The ‘Bitcoin crash’ metric is dwarfed by the interest in the ‘Bitcoin price’ query. The latter’s popularity peaked in May 2021 amid a price decline.
Back in November 2021, Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $69,000.
Read ForkLog’s Bitcoin news in our Telegram — cryptocurrency news, prices and analytics.