‘Buy bitcoin with credit card’ is on the rise on Google, sparking bubble fears
Other search trends show that bitcoin holds a solid lead in Google quests for digital currencies, even though it has a growing list of competitors
By Jeff Cox
The quest to find whether cryptocurrency bitcoin is in a bubble could be found on search engines, where one bubbly sounding term is on the rise.
Google Trends says the search term “buy bitcoin with credit card” is around its historic peak, notes Nick Colas, co-founder of Data Trek Research and the first Wall Street analyst to take the digital currency seriously.
While the phrase is only about three per cent of all bitcoin searches, it is on the rise.
The popularity and curiosity of using leverage to get in on the action come as bitcoin’s price continues to scale new heights. In another surge to the upside Monday, bitcoin rose past US$9,600 in morning trade, a rise of nearly seven per cent in a 24-hour period and 17.5 per cent over the past week alone. It later was trading around US$9,500.
“These bubbles tend to end in tears,” Citadel hedge manager Ken Griffin told CNBC in an interview Monday.