Most people in the crypto ecosystem are already aware of the fact that Bitcon’s prices are closely tied to the public perception. Whenever that is the case, both in the crypto world and the world of stocks, we can be sure that their will be an effort to both sabotage the perception and subverse it. That is the case happening now with Google trends on “BTC” searches.

The trend for “BTC” and Bitcoin has been closely tied up until now. This week, google searches for “BTC” has suddenly eclipsed that of “Bitcoin”. The spike occurred sometime on August 30th and has been steadily oscillating upward since. The search interest for ‘BTC’ has exceeded anything seen in the past five years.

It seems as though someone is playing with Google searches to inflate ‘BTC’ interest.

Crypto news and analysis website Kryptografen writes:

“That the same pattern can be seen all over the world may indicate that VPN services have been used to distribute the search across the world, thus achieving a global trend. Google Trends points out that changes have been relatively large in Romania. Is this the source, or is it just because there have been fewer searches for BTC previously? Whatever the answer is–something very strange has happened to the interest in the keyword ‘BTC' this past week.”

It's safe to say the entire world hasn't suddenly gone crazy for “BTC” (as opposed to “Bitcoin”), which strongly suggests manipulation. Simultaneously, numerous other Internet search volume gadgets aren't showing the same thing. They're still showing the usual balance of “Bitcoin” to “BTC” Internet searches, with “Bitcoin” being several times more popular than “BTC”.

Although it cannot be confirmed that this has had any influence on the price trends. With Bitcoin dominance sitting at around 70% at the time of writing, a level not seen since March 2017, Google search interest should be trending higher.