Whether a new bubble, Ponzi scheme, or, as Paul Krugman argues, new gold, cryptocurrencies have accelerated their expansion since the pandemic.
As Americans started looking for new ways to allocate extra cash, entire countries (think El Salvador) adopt bitcoin as legal tender and large brands like Tesla consider accepting it as a payment option, Semrush decided to assess the impact of the new wave of crypto rise on search to pinpoint some emerging 2021 crypto trends.

Most Searched Cryptocurrencies Worldwide & in the US in 2021

Globally, the dominance of bitcoin is uncontested. Searches for Satoshi Nakamoto’s crypto were twice higher than for dogecoin, the second most popular cryptocurrency worldwide.

The US, however, seems to be showing more volatile trends.

Up to April 2021, bitcoin searches were times higher than the rest. But thanks to the rising dogecoin hype (remember that infamous Elon Musk tweet), the US public’s interest in dogecoin exceeded that of bitcoin.

In April and May 2021, dogecoin got 40% more searches in the US.

most searched cryptocurrencies in 2021 in US and globally

The Second Most Searched Cryptocurrencies

While in 2021 dogecoin takes the second spot among the most popular cryptocurrencies worldwide (in terms of searches), some countries do stand out:

Vatican City’s second most popular crypto is “dash”. Although the Catholic Church has tried to embrace the rise of crypto early on and was even considered a potential first state adopter, they are now getting more cryptoconscious.
Unlike the rest of the world, Japan’s second most searched crypto is xrp. Only in Japan, this digital token is considered to be a cryptocurrency rather than a security (like in the US).
Curiously, French Guiana is the only country where ethereum, previously the key bitcoin rival, has comparable popularity.

The Second Most Searched Cryptocurrencies after bitcoin

Countries With The Most Cryptocurious Population

If you’d expect to see the likes of Canada and the US among countries with the highest share of crypto searches, you’d be surprised.

Few European states - the Netherlands, Slovenia, Switzerland, Austria - and Turkey make up the top 5 countries with the most cryptocurious population. At least, it’s true for the first half of 2021.

This interest has nothing to do with the country’s population (we’ve normalized the search numbers by 1,000,000 population) or wealth level. If Turkey and Switzerland are among the top 10 countries with the highest crypto ownership, the rest within this top 5 are behind.

Countries With The Most Cryptocurious Population

Bitcoin Price & Searches

You’d expect that rising bitcoin searches correlate with its growing price. And the first assumption is that people look up bitcoin as the price goes up. But interestingly, if we look at the graphs below, we can see that the search surge actually seems to precede the pricing boom.

But do note that correlation does not mean causation, and this data might not necessarily imply that the search spikes do affect the pricing. After all, it's hard to imagine hardcore crypto investors having to Google bitcoin just before buying it.

Disclaimer: this data does not in any way imply that you should place your investment decisions based on search trends.

Correlation between bitcoin price and its searches

Exploring the 2021 Dogecoin Rise

Elon Musk is already known as a great influence-driver on the cryptomarket. Vox has done an in-depth cover of how his tweets affected the bitcoin prices:

Elon Musk tweets

We can see a similar pattern related to the rise of dogecoin.

Launched back in 2013, dogecoin gained its momentum in January 2021 when thanks to some Twitter attention from Elon Musk (others like Snoop Dogg followed later), the crypto searches grew by 9,900% in the course of a few days (from 27 to 29 January).

Elon Musk’s tweets do fuel up people’s interest in the crypto, which pushed dogecoin to its peaking $0.5 price (a 20,000% YoY increase) in May 2021.

sentiment about dogecoin

Despite some criticism over Musk’s growing influence on cryptomarkets, we can see that his dogecoin-related tweets are actually getting a larger share of positive sentiment (45%) vs. 9% negative.

sentiment about Elon Musk

Bitcoin vs. Dollar vs. Euro

Based on 2021 search data, globally, users search for bitcoin 7X more than for dollar and 42X times more than for euro.

While this may imply that bitcoin is more popular than dollar or euro, probably people are just not Googling traditional currencies all that much. After all, various apps and bank’s street windows feature USD/EUR exchange rates while bitcoin is still something you’d have to Google.

Of course, in the US the interest gap is even wider. As Americans are less likely to Google their own national currency (other nations tend to Google dollar to look up exchange rates), bitcoin is 57 times more popular than dollar.

bitcoin vs other currencies

Most Visited Cryptocurrency-related Websites - Worldwide Trends

Over the past four years, the top 3 most popular cryptoexchages and crypto-related websites have remained the same. But each platform saw some whopping traffic spikes:

Coinmarketcap, the absolute leader, more than tripled its average monthly visitor base thanks to the 2021 crypto boom.
Binance, the second most visited crypto-website, used to attract twice fewer crypto aficionados than the market leader. Yet in 2021, the platform’s traffic grew by almost 5X, bringing its visitor numbers closer to that of Coinmarketcap.
Coinbase, the third most popular one, actually didn’t manage to leverage the market growth to the same extent. Before 2021 the platform's traffic numbers were comparable to Binance, but in 2021 Coinbase had 40% fewer visitors than its previously closest competitor.

most visited cryptocurrency websites

Entering the Era of NFTs and Crypto Loans?

We stacked the Jan-May 2020 frequency of all crypto-related searches up against the Jan-May 2021 stats to pinpoint some emerging growth trends in the realm of crypto and assess which search terms gained more popularity.

DeFi (decentralized finance, a blockchain-based form of finance) has been gaining momentum with related terms like uniswap and liquidity pool getting more and more popular in 2021.

The most trending crypto-related search, however, is NFT. Thanks to growing coverage of NFT’s multimillion sales, in just one year, NFT searches skyrocketed (+30,310% in the US and +10,581% worldwide).

Search data also points to another curious trend. 300% more users started Googling crypto loans both in the US and globally. This rising demand does not yet mean that crypto loans will soon replace traditional bank credits, but this is something to watch out for once the crypto boom calms down.

Also, as more people got cryptocurious and started investing in cryptocurrencies, searches for “crypto sentiment” also spiked up.

Unlike traditional stock markets, the cryptomarket’s pricing is more affected by such factors as hype and key players’ behavior rather than “hard” factors like ARR, P/E, quarterly reports, etc. So, with general crypto audience expansion, 300% more people started Googling this term probably to learn how to measure the crypto sentiment - for the ability to predict the market trends and make smarter investment decisions.

cryptocurrencies trending terms

Hope you enjoyed reading this study and deep-diving into the latest search trends around the crypto boom!

Now that you’re all covered in regard to crypto search trends, make sure to browse through the Semrush blog for more interesting and newsworthy studies that cover everything from fashion to fintech trends.

About Semrush:

Semrush is a leading online visibility management SaaS platform that enables businesses globally to run search engine optimization, pay-per-click, content, social media and competitive research campaigns and get measurable results from online marketing. Semrush offers insights and solutions for companies to build, manage, and measure campaigns across various marketing channels. Semrush, with over 72,000 paying customers, is headquartered in Boston and has offices in Philadelphia, Dallas, Prague, St. Petersburg, Warsaw, and Limassol.

If you have questions, interested in other studies or need exclusive data, drop us a line at pr@semrush.com

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