Bitcoin interest hits 5-year high in US, defying bear market price drop

Bitcoin search interest in the US is finally rising towards 2021 highs.

The move comes even as Bitcoin is trading in the mid-$60,000 range after topping $126,000 in October 2025.

This combination, which gains attention as prices fall, is an unfamiliar noise pattern in cryptocurrencies. As the market moves away from the window, the masses move back towards it, and the gap between the two is very interesting.

Institutional interest in Bitcoin in the retail industry has been notoriously slow this cycle, with Google searches not yet reaching 2021 levels.

On October 6, 2025, Bitcoin hit an all-time high, resetting everyone’s internal risk-reward standards in one day’s tape.

Today, February 23, 2026, the benchmark has reversed and Bitcoin has fallen towards $64,000 under tariff uncertainty.

This is about a half drawdown from the October peak, which changes the behavior, changes the tone of any decline, changes the vocabulary of any bull market, and tends to call for the same two groups at once, with investors looking for an upside and incumbents looking for an exit.

Search data is in the middle of human machines. It’s not about price or quantity. It’s a receipt for attention, the kind of attention that comes before someone buys, after someone sells, and during those anxious hours when people try to explain what happened.

Bitcoin searches in the U.S. have returned to their highest level since 2021, and the global line is also trending upward, but still short of its 2024 peak.

This gap is important less as a culture war or America vs. the world than as a map of where the narrative heat is building and which pipes can be reached first.

Google Trends also has a calculated warning label. Each graph scales interest from 0 to 100 within the selected region and time frame. So the cleanest claim is relative, meaning the US series is closer to its previous peak than the worldwide series.

So the question becomes practical: what kind of attention is coming back, and what kind of markets is it tied to?

A surge in searches can be the sound of new demand arriving, or it can be the sound of a stress test, with holders checking the rules, traders checking the exits, and everyone checking the same price level with different intentions.

The drop in prices to the low $60,000s occurred at a macro moment that felt like a risk-off. Amid the uncertainty surrounding customs laws, gold is rising, the dollar is falling, and Bitcoin is falling. The ordering between markets is important because it shapes what new entrants learn about Bitcoin in real time.

Attention as a volatility valve

Academic research has spent years formalizing what traders shrug and say: “Attention changes the distribution of outcomes.”

A 2019 university paper models Bitcoin’s returns alongside Google Trends’ “Bitcoin” attention, linking changes in attention to more jumpy behavior, which fits with the real-life experience of this market: the more people staring into a pipe, the more pressure there is to flow through that pipe.

This framing helps separate two stories that can share the same graph.

One story is that the increase in search is the first tier of new bids, and the market patiently absorbs demand over time, with the foundation forming while the public learns prices again.

In another story, the increase in searches is reactive, the public is reading the tape after the shock, and the subsequent trend is defensive, hedges are bought, exits are tested, and markets remain volatile even when prices stop falling.

Now the plumbing is confusing, the attention is warmer, and some of the institutional wrapping paper looks heavy.

The clearest daily window into that wrapper is the flow of the US Spot Bitcoin ETF, with a big red mark on the February tape. This is the kind of distribution pattern that keeps the rally honest, and it’s also the kind of pattern that makes retailers’ attention more important because fewer buyers do more work.

Market map, demand at the bottom, supply at the top

Glassnode’s February 11 weekly issue provides a map that is most useful as a forward lens, an area that traders can point to without turning the article into prediction theater.

The framework explains that Bitcoin adheres to a demand corridor of around $60,000 to $72,000, and if that corridor breaks down, the realized price as a deeper gravity level is around $55,000.

On the positive side, Glassnode flags overhead supply bands around $82,000 to $97,000 and $100,000 to $117,000. These are zones where former buyers tend to become sellers and where the mobilization of remedies tends to be delayed in negotiations.

We also discuss the appropriate hedging posture for this drawdown feeling, front-end implied volatility spiking by about 20 volume points, and skew pricing for puts with large put premiums on the 1-month and 3-month tenors.

These types of options tend to emerge when investors pay their premiums, and the spot market tends to keep reacting as hedge flows lag behind each sharp move.

Street forecasting adds an additional layer of scoping. Standard Chartered lowered its outlook for the end of 2026 to $100,000 from $150,000 and discussed a path forward that included a possible decline towards $50,000 before recovery.

The $50,000 marker can attract limit orders, headlines, and fear, so the forecast is the weight of the narrative that determines how risk committees discuss and how retailers interpret drawdowns.

Three scenarios of what this search rebound means

1. Attention turns to stable bids. The ingredients here are observable, with ETF flows moving from a temporary boom to consistent inflows, prices holding within Glassnode’s $60,000-$72,000 corridor, and options markets easing as hedges unravel. In that world, the first durability test would be in the $82,000 to $97,000 overhead supply band, where the base would either upgrade to the trend or stall into another range.
2. A spike in searches is a stress test. Attention has increased, ETF flows remain heavy, implied volatility remains high, and the market continues to pay for downside insurance. Under that setup, the $60,000 to $72,000 corridor carries the weight of the psychological downside, and the realized price around $55,000 becomes the next key shelf for traders to watch for capitulation behavior. Standard Chartered’s $50,000 discussion sits nearby as the anchor of the story, a number that could potentially change the market. When I start to feel like I can reach it, I rush.
3. America’s attention remains high, and the world’s attention remains subdued. It’s a regionalized tape, US-driven headlines, US-driven pipes, and a market that trades more like a macro commodity than a recruiting story. The Guardian’s tariff day framework fits into this system, with Bitcoin sold at risk, gold under bid, the dollar falling, and the crypto story following the same macro calendar that drives every other chart. When inflation remains high, markets price every policy headline as an interest rate article, and cryptocurrencies inherit sensitivity through liquidity and discount rate expectations.

What all three scenarios have in common is participation. Search interest represents the number of people returning to the room.

The unresolved issue is conversion. How much of that attention turns into buying power, how much turns into hedging flow, and how much turns into a noisier market that moves faster in both directions?

This research suggests that attention itself can increase volatility. This means that the next leg may arrive with a sharper edge, even if the destination remains unclear.