Tyler Winklevoss the Co-Founder and CEO of top cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, says the Bitcoin rally that took the price to over $18,000 is not yet a FOMO rally. Winklevoss in a tweet said the rally is due to steady hands in the cryptocurrency industry, which means investors on the sidelines are yet to jump in.

Google searches for “bitcoin” remain steady

Winklevoss seems to attribute his conviction to the stable search for Bitcoin on Google. This implies that an uptick in Google searches for Bitcoin will be an indication of a FOMO kicking in and since it remains steady, this has not happened yet.

FOMO is a term used in the cryptocurrency space which means “Fear of Missing Out”. This describes the panic buying of Bitcoin for instance when the price starts to surge so great that those who have been reluctant to buy become convinced that they are getting left behind. As a result, FOMO has historically pushed Bitcoin price to higher levels, although it is not the only factor.

A look at Google searches for Bitcoin in the last 12 months shows that the highest it has ever reached was in May 2020 around which time it hit $10,000 for the second time in 2020. Since then, there has been a decline and while it is moving back up slowly, it has not yet reached the May levels, showing that there is no fresh interest in the asset yet.

The institutional interest could be responsible for price surge

Bitcoin has broken several price levels in 2020 in the ongoing bull market. The bull run followed shortly after a wave of institutional investment in Bitcoin which has resulted in well over half a million Bitcoins being on corporate balance sheets. Adoption has been mentioned as a major driver of price action and analysts believe this may be responsible for the price surge being witnessed right now.

Could this be the only factor responsible for the price surge or could there be something else? At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin is trading at $18,129. As the FOMO has not started yet, a bigger move is probably ahead. Will 2020 record a new all-time high for Bitcoin?