Investors Far More Likely to Search Online for Bitcoin Than Traditional Assets

Digital fundraising platform BlockState took a look at common search terms used by consumers in English speaking countries when they consider investing.

In the UK the search volume for new and alternative investments like cryptocurrency was more than double that of traditional assets. Cryptocurrency saw a surge in popularity in 2017 following a price spike, and it is the Blockchain technology behind cryptocurrencies that enables assets to be tokenised.

While in the UK 144,800 searches were made for investments, with gold and bonds being the most searched terms, 383,600 searches were made for cryptocurrency, with the vast bulk (301,000) for Bitcoin, in the year from May 2018 to May 2019.

The cryptocurrencies Ripple and Ethereum yielded 50,000 and 33,000 results respectively in UK searches. Overall 5.8 per 1000 people in the UK made a search for cryptocurrency, compared with just 2.2 per 1000 people for traditional investments.

Australians the most investment savvy

The pattern is slightly different in other English speaking countries. The search volume per capita for all investments was highest in Australia, where 14.8 out of 1000 people searched for investment-related terms. 221,000 traditional investment searches were made, and 149,000 for cryptocurrency, a higher number per capita than in the UK.

BlockState analysed search results in several English speaking countries and found that, with the exception of Australia, Bitcoin was the most popular investment search term in each. In the USA, Canda, Ireland and South Africa, searchers were up to four times as likely to search for cryptocurrency than traditional investments.

Interest in cryptocurrency was particularly strong in Canada and Ireland, with 6.9 and 6.3 people per 1000 respectively searching for Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple. In the USA interest in cryptocurrency was also strong, with the term yielding 1.5 million searches compared with just over 500,000 searched for traditional investments.

Paul Claudius, founder and CEO of BlockState, commented on the analysis: “A major problem for small investors is that the number of investment opportunities is limited. At BlockState, we address this problem by representing ownership to assets in the form of digital tokens, making them more easily accessible to investors. This allows both company shares and other investment objects such as art or real estate to be made accessible to an international investor audience. This type of fundraising is realised through so-called smart contracts based on blockchain technology".

BlockState’s analysis is based on search data for May 2018 to May 2019 for the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa and India.