The bitcoin price carved out a new 2019 high on Sunday, piercing above $11,200. The parabolic rally marks a 250 percent recovery from the lows of October 2018. But this price rally is missing one thing: retail investors.
Judging by Google search trends for the phrase “buy bitcoin,” the mainstream is absent from the latest price rise. It’s a sharp contrast to bitcoin’s parabolic bubble in 2017, which was triggered by an influx of the general public.
At the height of bitcoin's 2017 bubble, Google search volume for "buy bitcoin" hit 100/100. Today, it's at just 7/100. Source: Google Trends
Instead, bitcoin’s move above $10,000 is driven by institutions and existing players moving money back into bitcoin. If this analysis is correct, there’s significant room for bitcoin’s price to explode further.