Last week was marked by a massive collapse of bitcoin price triggered by the fall on traditional markets due to the panic over the coronavirus. The chaos was spread far beyond the financial world and as the most of the population on Earth is locked down at their homes, panic buying has gone over the top. However apart from extremely high interest in toilet paper and food, there is also an increasing interest in online products now.

The reason for that is of course the fact that people spend the most of their time at home now, working or studying remotely, and this automatically makes them spend more time sitting at their computers. Naturally the online entertainment services get more attention together with online communication tools and software for distance work and e-learning.

Bitmedia, the crypto advertising platform, was one of the companies to feel the impact of the ongoing situation. The company took a closer look at the crypto audience during the lockdown, in particular at the inner statistics, Google trends as well as at other open source data. Upon conducting the analysis they shared its insight regarding the current trends and happenings in the internet.

One of the key findings was the increased interest in the purchase of cryptocurrency as the price went down. Based on the information from google trends, the number of search requests ‘buy bitcoin’ has tripled as soon as the price went down (see chart). Moreover, in accordance with the information on Coinbase, the percentage of customers who are currently buying bitcoin has increased to about 75% over the last week, whereas only 25% of coinbase users were selling btc.

chart showing bitcoin price and google searches for buy bitcoin

“During the increase in volatility in all major financial markets, large players tend to reduce their share of high-risk investments, such as cryptocurrencies. This was the underlying reason for the latest collapse in the bitcoin price. Retail buyers, on the contrary, are expecting the inflation coming soon, and hence they are looking for ways to diversify their risks related to traditional banks and fiat money”. - Says Matvey Diadkov, the CEO of Bitmedia.

When analysing the trends in the countries, which were influenced by Covid-19 the most, it becomes obvious that people are bulk-buying not just food and basic-needs products, they are also looking at investing in Bitcoin. The chart below shows how the trends and search requests of coronavirus (the blue line) and the bitcoin (the red line) correlate between each other.

chart showing searches for coronavirus and bitcoin

It is interesting to notice that in Austria, Australia, Switzerland and Netherlands, Bitcoin was trending almost as much as the coronavirus over the last week. In Germany the number of Google searches were even higher at some point of time. The same trend can be also observed in the US, where the number of searches for bitcoin has increased, as more and more people shift to home office.

chart showing searches for coronavirus and bitcoin

Apart from considering bitcoin as a potential investment, these trends also imply that the people, while spending more time at home try to find out some new information for themselves, and it can be likely that the crypto community will have more newcomers soon.

Nevertheless, apart from the price trends, there are some other crypto-market happenings connected with the coronavirus situation. In accordance with the inner statistics provided by the Bitmedia team, the number of visitors of crypto-related websites has increased by 40% these days. When it comes to geos, Europeans are getting more and more active on crypto websites. Crypto related businesses are also trying to take the advantage of the current situation now.

All in all, despite the price drop last week the crypto market is showing good signs at the moment. Seems that with the current setup and mood of the community the bitcoin market has more and more room to keep growing and there is no need to panic, bitcoin will definitely prove itself during the instability on traditional markets and quantitative easing times. So stay safe, wash your hands and HODL:)

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