Bitcoin has been fighting to hold onto its recent gains over the last week with bitcoin bulls having to defend the $10,000 per bitcoin psychological barrier numerous times.
The bitcoin price, still up some 230% so far this year, has fallen from its recent highs of $13,880 per bitcoin to trade as low as $9,610 over the last week as traders and investors fear a market correction could be imminent.
Now, new research has found that national holidays and family gatherings could drive interest in buying bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies when the market is already doing well or improving—suggesting we could be set for a new bitcoin boost this fourth of July Independence Day holiday weekend, but it might not last.
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency awareness, something that was harder to measure before bitcoin's epic 2017 bull run sent the bitcoin price from under $1,000 per bitcoin to almost $20,000 in fewer than 12 months, appears to be closely tied to the bitcoin price, which gets pushed on by so-called fear-of-missing-out (FOMO), according to bitcoin and crypto prime dealer SFOX's research team.
"Part of the narrative surrounding [the 2017] unprecedented bull run was that many people were hearing about bitcoin for the first time," the researchers wrote in a blog post. "Over Thanksgiving dinner, the story goes, Luddites in the family would ask the more tech-savvy among them about this 'bitcoin' they’d seen in mainstream news — and how could they purchase some 'bitcoin coins' for themselves?
"Holidays within the bounds of pronounced bitcoin bull runs may correlate with temporary upswings in price, potentially due to FOMO."
If bitcoin does rally today it will be the fifth time in a row that it's climbed on the fourth of July.
"As the current bull run continues and major holidays take place, traders may do well to consider how much of market movements is from changed fundamentals and how much is from mass psychology: while improved fundamentals pave the way for sustained growth, the whims of psychology, historically, have proven to be relatively short-lived," researchers warned.
Researchers found that holiday-based price fluctuations in the bitcoin price chime with Google search data that shows over the winter 2017 bitcoin rally, U.S. search volume for the term "bitcoin" spiked in the days following Thanksgiving, in the days immediately before Christmas, and immediately after New Year’s.
Outside of the U.S., it was found a similar phenomenon took place in February of 2019 during the two-week Spring Festival celebrated throughout China with search volume for "bitcoin" in the country during the 2019 Spring Festival spiking as the festival began on Lunar New Year’s Eve.
