Member-only story
Is Retail FOMO Coming to Crypto?
After witnessing moonshots by Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and multiple other meme tokens, you can’t help but think that retail is starting to dive back into the crypto waters headfirst. Retail FOMO ignites crypto prices and ends in heartbreak once whales rush for the exits. Is all of this recent crazy price action drawing in the retail crowd yet? Let’s take a look at some metrics and try to see if the crowd is headed to the party.
There is no definitive metric that is going to tell us whether retail is coming. Ideally, we want to be ahead of FOMO as it’s more profitable to be selling into strength rather than chasing it. Additionally, we have learned from the past that the bottom falls out just as quickly as the peak arrives so it’s best to keep a clear head whenever possible.
Metric #1: Google Keyword Searches
Many retail investors will begin their search for crypto on Google. In the last bull market, Google searches for Bitcoin were off the charts and almost perfectly correlated with Bitcoin’s peak. While this cycle may be different, it seems obvious that people new to crypto would do keyword searches on Google. Here’s a chart featuring keyword searches over the past 5 years for Bitcoin, crypto, cryptocurrency, and Coinbase.