Bitcoin interest hits 5-year high in the United States defying bear market price decline
Bitcoin search interest in the United States is finally climbing back toward its 2021 highs.
The move comes even as Bitcoin trades in the mid-$60,000s after topping $126,000 in October 2025.
That pairing, attention rising as price slides, is an unfamiliar noise pattern in crypto; the public is walking back toward the window as the market walks away from it, and the gap between the two is extremely interesting.
Retail has notoriously lagged institutional interest in Bitcoin this cycle, and Google searches have yet to reach 2021 levels.
On Oct. 6, 2025, Bitcoin hit its all-time high, resetting everyone’s internal yardstick for risk and reward in a single day of tape.
Today, Feb. 23, 2026, the yardstick has flipped, and Bitcoin slid toward $64,000 under tariff uncertainty.
That is a drawdown of roughly half from the October peak, which changes behavior, it changes the tone of every dip, it changes the vocabulary of every rally, and it tends to summon the same two groups at once, investors looking for the on ramp, incumbents looking for the exits.
Search data sits in the middle of that human machinery, it is not price, it is not volume, it is a receipt for attention, the kind of attention that shows up before someone buys, after someone sells, and during the anxious hours when people try to name what just happened.
Bitcoin searches in the US rebounding to the highest level since the 2021 era, comes as the worldwide line turns upward too, but lags its 2024 peaks.
That gap matters less as a culture war, US versus world, and more as a map of where the narrative heat is building, and which pipes it can reach first.
Google Trends also carries a warning label in the math, each chart scales interest from 0 to 100 inside the chosen region and time window, which means the cleanest claim is relative, the US series is closer to its own prior peak than the worldwide series is to its own.
So the question becomes practical, what kind of attention is returning, and what kind of market does it connect to?
A search surge can be the sound of fresh demand arriving, it can also be the sound of stress testing, holders checking the rules, traders checking the exits, and everyone checking the same price level with different intentions.
The price decline into the low $60,000s happened in a macro moment that felt risk off; gold higher, the dollar weaker, and Bitcoin lower amid tariff legal uncertainty, and that cross-market sequencing matters because it shapes what newcomers learn about Bitcoin in real time.
Attention as a volatility valve
Academic work has spent years trying to formalize what traders say with a shrug, attention changes the distribution of outcomes.
A 2019 university paper modeled Bitcoin returns alongside Google Trends “Bitcoin” attention, and it links attention shifts to jumpier behavior, which fits the lived experience of this market, the more people stare at the pipe, the more pressure moves through it.
That framing helps separate two stories that can share the same chart.
In one story, rising searches are the first layer of a new bid, and the market absorbs the demand, with time, with patience, with a base that forms while the public learns the price again.
In the other story, rising searches are reactive, the public is reading the tape after a shock, and the flow that follows is defensive, hedges get bought, exits get tested, and the market stays choppy even when price stops falling.
Right now the plumbing reads mixed, attention is warmer, and parts of the institutional wrapper look heavy.
The cleanest daily window into that wrapper is US spot Bitcoin ETF flows, and the February tape has carried large red prints. That is the kind of distribution pattern that keeps rallies honest, and it is also the kind of pattern that makes retail attention more consequential, since fewer buyers are doing more work.
The market’s map, demand below, supply above
Glassnode’s Feb. 11 weekly read gives the most useful map for a forward lens, a range that traders can point to without turning the article into prediction theater.
Its framing describes Bitcoin defending a demand corridor around $60,000 to $72,000, with realized price around $55,000 as a deeper gravity level if that corridor gives way.
On the upside, Glassnode flags overhead supply bands around $82,000 to $97,000 and $100,000 to $117,000, zones where prior buyers tend to become sellers, and where relief rallies often slow into negotiation.
It also describes a hedging posture that fits the feeling of this drawdown, front-end implied volatility jumping by about 20 vol points, and skew priced toward puts, with a heavy put premium in the one-month and three-month tenors.
That kind of options surface tends to appear when investors pay up for insurance, and it tends to keep the spot market reactive, since every sharp move pulls hedging flows behind it like a wake.
Street forecasts add another layer of range setting. Standard Chartered cut its end-of-2026 forecast to $100,000 from $150,000, and it discussed a path that includes a possible dip toward $50,000 before a recovery.
Forecasts are a narrative weight that shape how risk committees talk, and they shape how retail interprets a drawdown, since a $50,000 marker can become a magnet for limit orders, headlines, and fear.
Three scenarios for what this search rebound can mean
- Attention converts into steady bid. The ingredients here are observable, ETF flows shift from episodic green days into a run of consistent inflows, price holds inside Glassnode’s $60,000 to $72,000 corridor, and the options market relaxes as hedges unwind.In that world, the first durable test sits in the $82,000 to $97,000 overhead supply band, where a base either upgrades into a trend or stalls into another range.
- The search spike reads as stress testing. Attention rises, ETF flows stay heavy, implied volatility stays elevated, and the market keeps paying for downside insurance.Under that setup, the $60,000 to $72,000 corridor carries the weight of a psychological floor, and realized price near $55,000 becomes the next key shelf that traders watch for capitulation behavior.Standard Chartered’s $50,000 discussion sits nearby as a narrative anchor, a number that can turn a drift into a rush if it starts to feel reachable.
- US attention stays hot, worldwide attention stays cooler. That is a regionalized tape, US driven headlines, US driven pipes, and a market that trades more like a macro instrument than an adoption story.The Guardian’s tariff day framing fits this regime, Bitcoin sells off alongside risk, gold catches a bid, the dollar slips, and the crypto narrative follows the same macro calendar that drives every other chart.When inflation stays sticky, markets price every policy headline as a rate story, and crypto inherits the sensitivity through liquidity and discount rate expectations.
Across all three scenarios, the common thread is participation, search interest is a proxy for how many people are stepping back into the room.
The open question is conversion, how much of that attention turns into buying power, how much turns into hedging flow, and how much turns into a louder market that moves faster in both directions?
The research suggests attention itself can thicken volatility, which means the next leg can arrive with sharper edges even if the destination stays unclear.
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