The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies has decreased by around 70% year-to-date (YTD), from $2.5 trillion to $770 million, as a result of widespread investor and trader capitulation.
Google Trends reports that the declining interest has also caused internet searches for the term “buy cryptocurrency” to drop to their lowest level since February 2020.
However, despite the market crash in 2022, retail interest in cryptocurrencies is still high, according to Accenture’s report for 2022.
A different study examines the top cryptocurrencies in the world for 2022, providing a general idea of what retail players may invest in as we approach 2023.
Bitcoin
With 28.41 million searches per month globally, Bitcoin has become the most googled cryptocurrencies in 2022.
As experts evaluate its quality in comparison to other cryptocurrencies in the market, demand is still largely high. For instance, venture capitalist Tim Draper believes that weaker coins will become extinct during the current crypto cold, which will be beneficial for BTC.
The price of BTC has decreased by around 65% year to date, and some analysts believe it might go as low as $10,000. However, searches made over the past year on the internet show that most people were looking to buy bitcoin rather than sell it, which suggests that most people have never owned bitcoin.
Dogecoin
With an average of 5.85 million monthly searches worldwide in 2022, Dogecoin ranks second to Bitcoin.
The major reason the memecoin gained news was because Elon Musk bought Twitter and teased his followers by integrating DOGE for in-app purchases. When it was listed on the American commission-free brokerage firm Robinhood, it did, however, also become more well-known.
As can be seen in the Google Trends figure below, these occasions helped Dogecoin experience brief increases in online searches. For instance, the eventual Musk purchase of Twitter in late October happened at the same time as Dogecoin internet trends surged to a perfect 100 score.
Despite DOGE’s price decline of almost 55% YTD, internet search data indicates that, like BTC, DOGE has a larger pool of potential buyers than sellers.
Shiba Inu
4.43 million people throughout the world searched for Shiba Inu in a given month. In the United States, the memecoin outperformed its main competition, DOGE, with 1.29 million monthly searches to DOGE’s 729,000.
This is true even though SHIB’s price performance in 2022 was less strong than DOGE’s. SHIB has lost around 75% of its value year to date, but it continues to make headlines thanks to its entrance into the metaverse and the potential release of Shibarium, its Ethereum layer-2 blockchain.
Additionally, Crypto.com caused an increase in “Shiba Inu” internet searches. The largest SHIB holding was held by the cryptocurrencies exchange in November 2022. The market’s concern that Crypto.com might go bankrupt caused it to sell its SHIB holdings.
CEO of Crypto.com Kris Marszalek confirmed that the company’s increasing SHIB reserves are a result of consumer purchases
Ethereum
Despite its price plunging 67% YTD, Ether is still the fourth-most-searched cryptocurrencies globally, receiving 3.84 million monthly searches in 2022.
The Merge caused the second-largest blockchain by market cap to transition from PoW to PoS, which kept it in the spotlight all year. Notably, when the PoS consensus layer was implemented in September, interest in the phrase “Ethereum” and associated terms like “Ethereum 2.0” and “Merge” spiked.
Internet searches for Ethereum may have increased as a result of worries that ETH would eventually be classified as a security. Paxful, a cryptocurrency exchange, just stopped supporting ETH for the same reasons.
Cardano
Cardano is now the fifth-most googled cryptocurrencies globally, receiving 1.47 million monthly searches on average in 2022.
The Cardano movement gathered momentum, especially in January 2022, when ADA’s price surpassed that of Bitcoin and Ether. The Vasil hard fork in September did not result in a surge in interest, but instead, searches have been dropping since then.