Retail Investors' Arrival Could Propel Another Bitcoin Price Surge

According to CryptoPotato, Bitcoin's price has surged from under $20,000 to over $50,000 since June 2023, primarily driven by the anticipation and approval of nearly a dozen spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States. However, retail traders seem to be absent, raising the question of whether their arrival could trigger another price surge for the asset in the coming months. Data from Google Trends reveals the typical behavior of retail investors, who tend to search more for hot investment options, leading to FOMO (fear of missing out) and entering the market. The cryptocurrency market is known for such sentiment changes, as it can quickly overheat when demand from retail investors skyrockets, leading to rising prices before an inevitable correction and market cooldown. Bitcoin began to recover in June 2023 when BlackRock filed to launch its own spot BTC ETF. Institutions started paying more attention to Bitcoin, and the anticipation changed from 'The SEC will never allow a spot BTC ETF' to 'It's a matter of when, not if.' This change led to growing hype and rising prices, with BTC soaring from under $20,000 in June 2023 to over $40,000 in early January. The actual approvals of 11 spot BTC ETFs led to a sell-the-news moment before the cryptocurrency soared past $50,000 for the first time in over two years. Despite large investors and institutions making significant Bitcoin purchases, reports suggest that smaller holders have been disposing of their BTC stash. Google Trends data shows that worldwide queries for Bitcoin are far from the 2017 boom, the 2021 bull run, and even the 2022 industry crashes. This indicates that retail investors have not yet arrived, even though BTC's price has more than doubled since last June. However, the upcoming halving could change this, given Bitcoin's price performance after previous halvings. It will be interesting to see if the retail crowd could be behind another run that results in a new all-time high for Bitcoin in the next few months.