Understanding Bitcoin Narratives : Global vs. Local Uncertainty Drivers

This paper explores global and local determinants of the popularity of Bitcoin. Using data of Bitcoin Google searches for the January 2010 to November 2021 period in a set of 22 countries. Our estimations corroborate that economic policy uncertainty at the country level does not play a significant role in explaining the searching patterns on Google for Bitcoin. However, global Economic Policy Uncertainty, geopolitical risk and Risk Aversion are important risk factors to explain social media interest in Bitcoin. Our findings are consistent with the existence of a strong commonality in the searching patterns across countries