For people who work, live, and trade bitcoin, it can be hard to get a true perspective on the digital currency’s popularity. It’s now been independently confirmed, however, that 2017 really was all about bitcoin. Google’s Year in Search has been published, and it ranks bitcoin as the second biggest news story of 2017, second only to Hurricane Irma. Both events were unstoppable forces this year, wreaking havoc in their respective spheres.
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Bitcoin Eclipses the Eclipse
Before Google weighed in, it was already evident that 2017 was a huge year for bitcoin. Analysts have struggled to frame bitcoin’s meteoric rise, both from a charting perspective and in terms of the momentum that the virtual currency has gathered. Last week, for instance, bitcoin exceeded the market cap of all but 12 of the S&P 500 companies and was the second most popular page on Wikipedia.
This week, it’s all about Google and the search engine’s confirmation that 2017 was the year of bitcoin. In terms of global news, bitcoin ranked second overall, above the Las Vegas shooting, North Korea, and the solar eclipse. Not content with muscling in on the news, bitcoin barged into the top five in Google’s “How to” search category.
This Year’s Must-Have Gizmo is Bitcoin
More people searched for “how to buy bitcoin” than searched for information on making fidget spinners or ways to watch the Mayweather-McGregor fight. It wasn’t all good news for bitcoin though: the digital currency is still less popular than slime. “How to make solar eclipse glasses” and “how to make slime” both exceeded bitcoin’s search volume.
Google’s search data allows users to filter results by country. In the United States, for example, 2017 saw bitcoin pop up once again in the “What is…” category, where it grabbed second spot. In the UK, meanwhile, “How to buy bitcoin” was the second most popular search term, coming in ahead of “How to stay young”. Who needs the elixir of eternal youth when you’ve got bitcoin?
It’s hard to imagine bitcoin becoming any bigger, from a news perspective, in 2018. If there’s one thing 2017 has shown, however, it’s that bitcoin has the capacity to astonish even its firmest believers.
Do you think bitcoin will dominate the news next year, or has the mania reached its peak? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Google.
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