Online traffic to Bitcoin’s Wikipedia page surged last week, signaling rising public interest in the asset as its price soared to a new yearly high.
On October 24, the page registered nearly 13,500 visits – the highest daily count since Bitcoin’s price plummeted below $20,000 in June 2022, according to data from The Block.
“Bitcoin’s recent rally and the potential for a spot ETF has people more interested in the asset,” said Rebecca Stevens from The Block Research. “The newfound interest can be shown in more casual ways, like more people visiting Bitcoin’s Wikipedia page.”
Bitcoin’s Wikipedia page is one of the front-page results generated when searching “bitcoin” on Google. Visits to the page have historically spiked in times of major upside or downside price action.
Besides last week’s surge, the collapse of crypto exchange FTX in November 2022 marked the page’s next-highest influx of visitors in the past 12 months. After BTC sank below $17,000 , the page received 11,000 visits on November 14.
Another major surge of traffic occurred on May 13, 2021, with Bitcoin’s price plummeting by roughly 50% after Elon Musk announced he would stop accepting BTC for car payments at Tesla. The site attracted over 63,000 clicks at the time.
The single largest day for visitors was on December 8, 2017, attracting a whopping 344,000 visitors as BTC rallied to an all-time high of $20,000.
Why Has Bitcoin Rallied?
Bitcoin’s rally in October has been partly driven by optimistic news that a spot Bitcoin ETF may soon be approved in the United States.
A false rumor that the approval had in fact happened took the asset to $30,000 on October 16. Then, more news about BlackRock’s spot ETF listing on the DTCC website and a court order for regulators to review Grayscale’s ETF application helped take it to $35,000 last week.
Yet there’s more to the story: some macro analysts, including BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, have theorized that investors are turning to BTC and gold as safe-haven assets instead of US government bonds, as the market loses confidence that the U.S. can handle its debt burden.
Specifically, Hayes highlighted that long-dated bonds experienced a selloff shortly after a speech from President Biden, signaling over $100 billion in overseas war financing.
“Bitcoin — along with gold — is rallying against a backdrop of an aggressive selloff in long-end US Treasuries,” wrote Hayes on his blog last week. “This isn’t speculation as to an ETF being approved — this is Bitcoin discounting a future, very inflationary global world war situation.”
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