Cryptocurrency-related search queries have surged in popularity to a new all-time over the past week—but not for positive reasons, according to Google.
“#cryptocurrency is at an all-time high for search interest, Worldwide,” Google Trends Twitter account reported on Thursday.
As CryptoSlate reported, the crypto market swiftly plunged deep into the red zone on May 19 as prices of most digital assets dropped by anywhere between 20% and 50% on average. The massive dip was largely attributed to several announcements coming from China, including a potential ban on institutions that deal in cryptocurrencies and a crackdown on Bitcoin mining.
According to Google Trends, an analytic tool that allows users to measure the frequency of various search queries, topics such as “What happened to cryptocurrency today” and “Should I sell my Bitcoin” (or “crypto” and “Bitcoin” in general) are currently showing a worldwide score of 100 on the “interest over time” chart—the highest value possible.
Fear and energy concerns
Interestingly, Bitcoins environmental impact—which has become a hot topic lately—is also extremely popular among Google users.
“Most energy-efficient cryptocurrency‘ and ’environmentally friendly cryptocurrency‘ are breakout searches. ’How does bitcoin use energy‘ +1,050%, past week US,” Google Trends’ team noted.
Other queries such as “Bitcoin carbon footprint” (87 points), “crypto electricity” (100), or “mining power” (95) are also frequently searched for.
Meanwhile, the “Crypto Fear and Greed Index,” a metric that reflects currently dominating sentiments among crypto enthusiasts, has plunged into “extreme fear,” hovering around 12 points out of 100 today.
The index takes into account various aspects such as volatility, the markets momentum and trading volumes, social media sentiments, trends, and so on. The metric scales from 0 (maximum “Fear”) to 100 (ultimate “Greed”).
Notably, todays “crypto fear” is roughly on the same level as it was in March 2020—when Bitcoin collapsed to around $5,000 amid the global coronavirus outbreak.