By Mix
Its not the flippening everyone has been talking about, but Googlesearch data reveals people are finally starting to show more interest in blockchain than cryptocurrency.
Following the massive hype cycle at the end of last year, Google Trends suggests the term blockchain is gradually becoming a more popular search criteria than cryptocurrency.
The first time blockchain briefly overtook cryptocurrency (after last years hype) was in July. And it has consistently attracted more searches than cryptocurrency, since at least September.
In all fairness, Bitcoin continues to be the most commonly searched crypto term by far. Indeed, Google Trends suggests that Bitcoin is nearly 10-times more popular than terms like cryptocurrency and blockchain.
For the record, prior to 2017s crypto-hype train, the data shows searches for the terms cryptocurrency and blockchain have remained relatively close in popularity over the past five years with the exception of a few irregularities.
Its worth pointing out that Trends only shows the relative popularity of a search term. The resulting numbers are then scaled on a range of 0 to 100 based on a topics proportion to all searches on all topics, Google explains. As such, there is no telling what the real numbers for blockchain and cryptocurrency searches are.
In any case, I guess the meme that crypto-enthusiasts are really in it for the tech is for once not that far off from the truth according to the numbers, at least.
On a more serious note though, the sentiment that blockchain (the technology) will outlast cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin) is slowly materializing into a popular mainstream narrative. Indeed, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently reinforced this same line of thinking in an interview at Axios Conference.
Lets see how long this trend lasts.
This article has been previously published on The Next Web.
Mix is a tech writer based in Amsterdam.