Suggesting that the momentum of interest in Blockchain technology is greater than that of the the digital currency it powers could create a wrong impression, says the CEO of LocalBitcoins, Nikolaus Kangas.
In a blog post, Kangas noted that he had earlier overlooked it when a “Finnish self-credited "blockchain expert" made a claim that during the last year, (the) term blockchain has passed bitcoin in google trends "clearly"...”. But he had to change his view after a co-worker pointed out the mistake.
After he’d recollected that he has seen the same claim elsewhere, Kangas cited a graph that was published by Credit Suisse last month which made a similar inference that Blockchain is gaining more momentum than Bitcoin.
This is debatable as a quick Google Trends search to compare both terms by anyone will show that interest relative to Bitcoin still has the highest flow.
Kangas writes:
“Perhaps you can make a sincere mistake with your slides you have created couple of hours before your pitch, but guess what? Same kind of graph can be found from Credit Suisse report as well!
If you are using Google trends as a reference, at least it would be somewhat fair to add the fact that bitcoin is still around five times more searched term than blockchain.”
The referenced Credit Suisse report says the buzz surrounding Blockchain is comparable to that surrounding the internet in the late 1980s add that some go as far as to suggest that Blockchain has the potential to reimagine and reinvent key institutions – for example, the corporation.
Bitcoin is still bigger
The report also says it found Blockchain more easily optimizable to different objectives than Bitcoin and think three key properties—disintermediation of trust, immutable record and smart contracts—endow the technology with real advantages to legacy systems.
However, Kangas questioned the scientific validity of the method used to search each trend individually as presented in the graph to add them up as one. Based on the illustration, he stated that he would totally understand if someone gets a wrong impression from these charts.
He added:
“...it is true that the miracle word "blockchain" has been popping up more and more lately, but this kind of graphs make you wonder if it is really based on any real life solutions, or is it just these "blockchain experts" who are making up the buzz.”
This argument was initially started on a Reddit discussion page for Bitcoin about a month ago when a forum member, rachyandco, posted a thread with the title: Credit Suisse is comparing the trends between BITCOIN and BLOCKCHAIN in a big report.
Another related Reddit post has since emerged. Hopitas started the thread: The claim that Google trend momentum for search "blockchain" is bigger than for search word "Bitcoin" is false.