Author: Stacy Muur, Web3 Researcher; Translation: Jinse Finance Xiaozou
Bitcoin's second decade is halfway through, and the 20th anniversary is not far off. During this time, influenced by market sentiment, political strategies, and the alternating cycles of bull and bear markets, the crypto world has undergone unpredictable changes.
Despite these fluctuations, new users keep entering the crypto world through various avenues. What are the most popular? Let's explore the answers in this article.
1. Common Keywords
To better understand changes in user interest, I analyzed Google Trends over the past five years. This period covers both bull and bear market cycles and provides an objective perspective.
People frequently search for general concepts such as 'crypto', 'blockchain', and 'token'. Unsurprisingly, the search volume for these keywords correlates with market uptrends.
However, these searches do not reveal intent. To better understand user interest, it is helpful to closely examine intent-based searches.
Historically, the primary uses of cryptocurrency have been trading, investing, and speculating. Following closely are airdrops, but not as frequently searched as keywords like 'trade' and 'invest'. Nevertheless, passive income remains a topic of interest for users proficient in cryptocurrency.
2. Trading-related Queries
Since we are discussing trading, let's take it a step further and delve into user brand awareness and key entry paths.
User interest in topics related to CEX (centralized exchanges) and DEX (decentralized exchanges) reflects that CEX trading volume dominates over DEX trading volume. Despite various opinions, DeFi remains a small part of the broader crypto market, where centralized exchanges like Binance cannot be underestimated.
Main Observations:
The popularity of CEX peaked in late December 2019 and fell to a low in mid-March 2021.
Binance has consistently led in search popularity among top centralized exchanges in 2024.
Interest in DEX hit a low in the summer of 2021 but reached an all-time high by the end of November 2024. This may have been driven by a new round of Bitcoin bull market and a surge in meme coin activity on Solana DEXs.
Among the DEXs leading in TVL, PancakeSwap dominated search popularity in May 2021. In December 2024, Uniswap leads, followed by Raydium.
The popularity of crypto derivatives peaked in 2021, but protocols like Hyperliquid have recently reignited interest compared to Drift Protocol and Jupiter.
Driven by discussions related to Trump on Polymarket, prediction markets soared in November 2024. However, interest quickly declined, reflecting a trend similar to November 2020.
3. Token Search Dynamics
The search popularity of the term 'crypto' is only comparable to that of 'Bitcoin', which is the primary query term related to crypto topics.
The search popularity of Bitcoin peaked during the bull market in 2021 and fell to its lowest point at the end of 2019. Even after Bitcoin first reached the price of $100,000 at the end of 2024, it failed to regain its former popularity.
At the same time, the query frequency of other top market cap tokens, including Ethereum, remains relatively stable, although XRP saw a significant increase following its recent rebound.
4. Narrative Popularity
When comparing user interest in major verticals (such as DeFi, RWA, DePIN, GameFi, and the recently popular AI x Crypto), user interest in the first two areas is sustainable. In contrast, other areas rely more on hype.
Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the RWA and AI x Crypto sectors, while DePIN, DeFi, and GameFi remain secondary.
The popularity of meme coins surged to unprecedented levels by the end of 2024. Meanwhile, AI-related tokens are gaining attention, with March 2024 being a key moment.
5. 2024 Keywords
Now that we have a rough understanding of current interest in Web3 and the main attention projects, let me share the most popular search queries in the crypto space as of now (sorted by search query volume).
Bitcoin - the invincible attention magnet
Ethereum
DEX
CEX
L1 and L2 - on par
DeFi
Altcoin
RWA
AI Agent
Memecoin
DePIN
NFT
GameFi
Metaverse
Here are the rankings of the largest Web3 brands:
Bitcoin
XRP
TON
Binance
Ethereum
Solana
USDT
TRON
Bybit
Metamask
OKX
The search for all other brands, including those often discussed on Crypto Twitter, such as Vitruals, Ethena, or any L2 chain, lags far behind the aforementioned brands.
What can we infer?
Most topics discussed on Crypto Twitter do not reach a global audience. Retail investors still join the crypto world through centralized exchanges, while DeFi captures only a small portion of crypto interest. Many hot brands today remain beyond the radar of retail investors.
