"Bitcoin" Google Search Trend vs Bitcoin Value [OC]

jreddit83 · 2017-05-11T14:18:23+00:00

I almost bought a single bit coin in 2011 for $11.... I royally screwed by not going through with it

TheDragonsForce · 2017-05-11T13:48:21+00:00

Anyone got any theories on what may have caused the search spike at the end of 2016?

Antinode_ · 2017-05-11T15:17:09+00:00

Bit offtopic, but I had just got a new job in 2014 and a few months in, the IT guys all got fired because they installed bitcoin miners on everyone's workstations that mined at night. Years later the software hadnt been completely removed and was causing random issues here and there.. I wonder if it was still going into their wallets?

SecondNad · 2017-05-11T07:29:17+00:00

With bitcoin hitting an all time high, I wanted to determine if there were some way of determining if its value was primarily driven by speculation. I realize this doesn't really prove that, but it's interesting to see that search traffic tends to lead spikes in value. It would be interesting to plot this against the number of bitcoin occurrences in headlines.
Data came from google trends and Coinbase records downloaded from Bitcoincharts API. The datasets were merged using a pretty simple python script which output to CSV, charts then made using google sheets. If anyone is interested in the raw data or the script, let me know.

iktkhe · 2017-05-11T16:05:03+00:00

I bet the guy that purchased a burger in the beginning for like 30k bitcoins i think it was, regrets that decision deeply now.

DanWillHor · 2017-05-11T15:11:48+00:00

Everyone has this story but I had a chance to buy a ton of Bitcoin back in July of 2011 (IIRC). I'm pretty sure it was July 2011 due to who I was with and where but I'm worn out, on a long road trip home and hungry. We all stop in a McDonald's that has TVs on the walls and the news is talking about Bitcoin falling to a few bucks overnight. I remember telling my cousin what it was and she was bored (ha). I ate my fries and we all finished the trek home.

Later that night I have a good friend wake me from a nap and link me to a forum where groups of people that owned a lot of Bitcoin were offloading them for cheap. We tried to mine it back in the early days with hopes of making money but we didn't stick with it. Yet, we always spoke of how we could invest in old computers to mine them, etc. Anyway, I go to the forum.

Most wanted around $20-30 per, some higher and some lower. However, one group was selling for $4 per but you had to buy a minimum of 50. I feared (in order) a scam, Bitcoin never regaining value and loss of an immediate chunk of cash. Why even sell that low, right? Maybe they had so many that $4 was some recoup on investment? Still, I passed like a chump idiot mook with donkey brains but the site looked sketchy and as if it were made an hour before.

Friend bought his own lot and has most to this day. I can't talk to him without hearing about it so I rarely do (ha). He sold less than 5 about a year ago for a couple grand and he still has over 50 that I know of for sure. He had over 100 at one point and I know that's nothing compared to some people but he spent $4 a piece for his.

Not sure of the price atm but I know $4 of bitcoin is about 1/40th of a single bitcoin. Roughly.

TL;DR Should have risked a few hundred bucks but I'm apparently a cheapskate moron and my buddy isn't except for all the time when I'm not and he is.

RedZeppelin00 · 2017-05-11T16:34:44+00:00

There was a bot on Reddit about 4 years ago that tipped bitcoins for a brief time. I was lucky enough to get tipped and held onto it since.

Edit: the bot /u/bitcointip

I was tipped 0.03BTC at the time which was worth about 2.79USD. Now that 0.03BTC is worth about 62USD.

DannySpud2 · 2017-05-11T15:37:22+00:00

Buy bitcoin(s)
Raise more publicity about bitcoin and get more searches going
???
Profit

RadicalDog · 2017-05-11T15:41:45+00:00

Something I'm seeing from this thread is that Bitcoin was so damn hard to buy, that everyone was "almost" rich even though only a few people actually are.

markayates · 2017-05-11T16:02:04+00:00

There was some bloke in the news in the UK. Had bought about £20 worth at <1p each when he was a student. 3 years pass and he throws away the old HDD. Week later he reads in the news about them being £100 each! Current value £4m or something. There was BBC news video of him walking round the landfill site looking for it. He was pissed then. Must be 10x worse now....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-25134289

zb401 · 2017-05-11T17:34:48+00:00

Friend of mine, who is currently in jail, told me we should each throw down $1000 and buy a shit load of bitcoin. Said it would be the future. Price was around $0.50 or something very close. We came to an agreement that we would hold it for 10 years, and then make a decision on whether to sell, or stay vested. It came time to make the purchase, but he had blown most of the money he set aside on drugs. We called it off and never really pursued it.

Fuck me.

markayates · 2017-05-11T15:57:01+00:00

I bought 4 off a bloke in the street on his phone. He normally sold gold/silver coins. Paid about £70 each for my first 2. £120 each for my next 2. Now at £1450 each. Thought it was dodgy - turned out to be legit and he was a good guy. I still have them on my PC. Bit worried about losing them... copied 0.1 to my phone - then lost my old phone. Bet the person who got the phone didn't even know what the bitcoin app with them on was! He'd have £145 now - more than the Samsung S2 was worth at the time.

JAPaulson · 2017-05-11T16:45:56+00:00

I tried to "mine" bitcoins and never found one, this was back in 2014. Evidently, you need specialized machines to do it now.

OC-Bot · 2017-05-11T09:23:10+00:00

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NbdySpcl_00 · 2017-05-11T12:56:31+00:00

How do you know the rise in value isn't making people search for it more?

m7samuel · 2017-05-11T18:07:38+00:00

PSA: Please no one take investing advice from any of these comments. They're equal parts sunk cost fallacy, attempts to time the market, and willful ignoring of opportunity cost.

Clever_Userfame · 2017-05-11T14:38:34+00:00

Very interesting correlation.. I wonder if the inverse will be true: if people stop taking interest in bitcoin, it will stagnate and maybe devalue. I suppose the causation is inherent within the relationship between bitcoin consumer interest, acquirement and trade.

markayates · 2017-05-11T15:26:21+00:00

clever -but might as well chart Hollywood actor wages per film vs people who've heard of that person (googled their name). They would argue the more people have heard of them - the more people will search for them / the more interest in them.

Basically - people who haven't heard of something aren't going to search for it, and vice versa!

WrongRighter · 2017-05-11T15:30:35+00:00

What would happen if someone secretly created a quantum computer then stole everybody's bitcoin wallets with a brute force attack from a quantum computer? Would they be billionaires?

drunkencow · 2017-05-11T16:14:51+00:00

I love how the one of the biggest reasons bitcoins took off in price was the shutdown of Silk Road. An underground drug trading system got a digital currency to multiply in price by a stupid amount.

huntargh · 2017-05-11T17:12:47+00:00

Google:

What is Bitcoin? How does Bitcoin work? How to buy Bitcoin? Will Bitcoin fit in my butt?

UnknownPerson69 · 2017-05-11T17:23:37+00:00

Why buy Btc when you can trade it against the major currency pairs. I think that's where the $$$ is. Not in the product but how volition it is.

gusbyinebriation · 2017-05-11T13:18:35+00:00

Great vizz! How do you normalize the values. Avoiding double axis this way looks very good!

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