This week social media website Twitter fell victim to a sophisticated social engineering hack that saw a number of leading political and entertainment figures post false messages about a fraudulent Bitcoin giveaway.

The hacker posed as celebrities before posting a link to a Bitcoin address, stating that if people sent money they would receive back double.

This was, obviously, a scam. But that didn’t stop people send more than $150,000 to the series of addresses that were posted from the likes of Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’ accounts.

Mainstream media flocked to the event, with more articles being published on Bitcoin than in the 2017 bull market.

Numerous people in the cryptocurrency industry believed that the event would be positive for Bitcoin as it would cause an increase in attention, but data from Google search trends indicates the opposite.

Worldwide Google searches for Bitcoin is now more than 50% lower than in May, which was around the time of the highly-anticipated halving.

Staggeringly, Google searches are also 90% down from its high in December 2017, which coincided with Bitcoin’s all-time high of $20,000.

The lack of retail interest surrounding cryptocurrencies, as previously noted by Coin Rivet, indicates that an influx of institutional investment is behind the current $9,150 valuation.

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