Relation between Searches for Bitcoin and Searches for the Characteristics of Bitcoin Users in Canada

Abstract

Bitcoin has recently gained wide attention in the news and across different social media platforms. With this increasing interest in the cryptocurrency, there have been several purposes for which Bitcoin has been used by people from different backgrounds. This paper uses Google Trends to analyse the relation between search interest in Bitcoin and the users of the currency. The users of Bitcoin were grouped into four categories and data were obtained for the period 2015 – 2017, for seven Canadian provinces. After conducting the initial analysis to examine the relation, I further include data on Bitcoin prices, unemployment rate and a placebo clientele group to study the sensitivity of the results due to the inclusion of additional variables. Overall, the paper finds no evidence of a robust relation between search interest in Bitcoin and its users in Canada.