The Bitcoin craze has ended in India only to be replaced by an Ethereum mania, according to research by Jana, a company that specializes in providing mobile advertising and free internet.
The government of India has been concentrating on Bitcoin, but Jana found that an impressive 34.4% of local searches over the past five months had to do with Ethereum, as reported by Quartz.
Overall, Bitcoin appeared in 29.9% of searches, which still puts not that far behind. The next in line was BuyUCoin (an exchange in India) with 21.4% of searches. Number four was Dash, accounting for 5.3% of queries.
Out of all the cryptocurrencies tracked, Monero was the least popular, getting only 0.3% of the search volume.
If we look at the statistics chronologically, we can see how far ahead of Bitcoin Ethereum has pulled in India. In the last week of February, Jana found that searches for Ethereum were twice as many as those for Bitcoin.
Also, searches in general for any cryptocurrency dropped significantly in number at the start of the year, likely as a result of regulatory threats.
“The government recommending shutting down exchanges and limiting currencies altogether, coupled with the decline in prices, has led to the feverish pitch waning away dramatically. There are still quite a lot of searches but maybe we’re getting closer to what a true steady state should look like,” said Jana CEO Nathan Eagle.
In November last year, a local media organization reported on a committee that allegedly told the Indian government to initiate a crackdown on “cryptocurrency dealers” in the country.
The reports may have been sketchy, but we saw confirmation of regulatory issues when two Indian crypto exchanges shut down their operations at the beginning of last month.
It appears that many people are starting to turn their backs to cryptocurrencies amid the uncertainty, at least for the time being.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
