Bitcoin Forum

http://i.minus.com/jWd41qXHkTU0Z.jpg

Its the first time in History that the Bitcoin price is significantly above general public's interest for a lengthy time period.
It could mean that only bitcoin owners adding to the existing stock and broader public moved on. If this is the case, price can not be sustained on the long run.  Of course it could mean a whole lot of other things.
Anyone is free to digest this info in the preferred way. Its just another piece to the puzzle



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Interesting point and the once again low volume worries me.

Have you seen todays Greece news? Another Cypress will change things...

Yes volume is very low, not really surprising if general public interest once again fades. Miners hoard and permabulls buy.

The only news i read about greece is the closer of the state propaganda machine. Not really sure what to make of it, i guess it will happen everywhere. TV is a dying medium anyway and some private Broadcasters will always be around. Internet is the new king.

It's, obviously, a 2-way causal relationship. More searches make the price grow, the price growth causes more searches, and more media attention.

It is worth noting that there was the reward halving event at the end of 2012. If you divide the 2013 data by 2 (I'm not saying this is the right thing to do - supply is probably in a nonlinear relationship to price), that would push the price curve back under the search trend.

Quality of investors probably plays here too. Larger investors do not contribute too much to the search volume, but they can cause a significant price increase. The opposite may be true - higher prices attract larger investors.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/us-greece-tv-idUSBRE95A0ZN20130612 (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/us-greece-tv-idUSBRE95A0ZN20130612)

Now here is something interesting. I posted this in another thread from that link:

They changed it, it now says:
It is still in the article, but no longer in the headline! Wow, Reuters doing what they can do for those that just read the bolded intro...

It seems the main outrage is about the way ERT was shut down, not that it was shut down. Reading between the lines its another very inefficient greek company with lots of political friends having an easy job. If they would try to just reduce the workforce unions would be up in arms. In a few weeks they are back on air with a fraction of the original staff with new contracts, less pay more work.
A lot of people will need to tight the belt in times to come lots of places on the globe. Bad news out of Greece does not rock the boat to much this days, its expected.

Russell indices already reclassified them in March, so it's not a big surprise, just the first time that MSCI have done it as I understand it. Humiliating for Greece nonetheless.

You missed the much BIGGER point. Yes, the news is covering that part of the issue. The much bigger problem is the downgrade. That downgrade can cause BIG problems, money can start exiting. Downgrading things like bonds and such causes huge problems. Not sure the effect on Greece but the article did mention money leaving. This accelerates things.

They just added fuel to the fire.

Price spikes drive Google searches, and not the other way around.

Google trends just indicates that the great public (and its money) is less interested in BTC than prior to April, 10th which is the obvious and expected outcome of a bubble burst.

That said, the price chart will not overlap the Google trend chart EVERY time because Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme. You don't need a constant influx of new money to have a stable price.

It's price discovery, 100$ is the new ~5$

These two data series have different units.  They are arbitrarily aligned, so "above" and "below" have no significance.

Also, google search trend doesn't even begin to come close to being an important price driving factor of bitcoin, nor is it alone in being one of the myriad of variables that might have bearing on it.

Because you graphed it like that.

Hmm... Right, they seem arbitrarily aligned even on the X-axis, with search volume data shifted to the left. Just noticed that.

This chart actually proves that it's mostly price spikes that cause the search volume spikes, rather than the other way around, since if you align them properly, price spikes would come first.

Whether the data series have different units is irrelevant if you are trying to establish a correlation / causal relationship. Correlation is always up to a factor, and it doesn't matter if that factor is measured in (USD * month) / (BTC * Searches). But you do have to align them on the X-axis properly.

And, again, search volume might be an indicator of demand, but since BTC supply was reduced at the end of 2012, and price is determined by demand _and_ supply, OP definitely needs to take that into account if he is trying to make a point.

I made no mention of causality, only that crosses are not significant.

I personally believe price causes search volume but the reverse does not hold.  There is a stronger (though still weak) case for the term "buy bitcoin" since this is an indication of someone specifically looking for a source of bitcoins (usually a new user, although existing exchanges having problems can also increase the search volume).

This.
I have been doing a lot of bitcoin searches lately, but with duckduckgo.

I don't know how google's search market share is trending, but if the google search trend isn't adjusted to growth and declines in google's market share then there is even less info in that graph.

Lot of people are not using google now, not liking what google has become. Us google exiters may be segment more likely to search for bitcoin info, no? That would skew the results.

+1 on duckduckgo.

While you're right that search volume itself doesn't directly cause the price to move that doesn't necessarily mean its a useless datapoint. I think that Bitcoin searches in google are a good thermometer of public interest in Bitcoins.

You say that price drives search volume but what drives price? I think it's public interest in Bitcoins from people who are just learning about it. It's a very cool idea and there's quite a bit of info to absorb.
Someone in that situation is likely to type Bitcoin into google at least a few times and be more likely to buy them as well.

That said I really think the current price is on the high side. I predict about half the current price will be our real bottoming out point.

If you want a search engine that respects privacy I recommend

https://ixquick.com

or

https://startpage.com/