Which Countries Are Most Interested in Bitcoin Halving?

We have yet to reach the quarter-way point in the year, but 2024 has proved to be a momentous one for Bitcoin. On 13 March, the cryptocurrency surged to an all-time-high, hitting a peak of $73,634, and while it has since dipped by 10% to $66,077, the year as a whole has witnessed an overall climb of more than 60%. We have come a long way over the course of just a few months, when Bitcoin started the year at a modest $45,000.

Despite its remarkable popularity and global growth, Bitcoin is inherently finite: only 21 million Bitcoin will ever be mined, and at the timing of writing some 19.6 million have already been generated. At current rates, it is expected that it will take until 2040 to mine the remaining Bitcoin, because Bitcoin production decelerates over time. This slow-down is achieved through a process called “halving”, a system designed to generate scarcity and increase the value of Bitcoin. In simple terms, once 210,000 Bitcoin blocks have been produced, the number of Bitcoins granted per block is halved. While each completed block is currently rewarded with 6.25 Bitcoin, this will drop by 50%, to 3.125 BTC, at the next halving.

As Bitcoin halvings historically tend to take place a little under every four years, we are due one very soon, and it is anticipated that the next one will take place in April 2024. We at Bankless Times have looked at the global search volumes in the twenty countries where cryptocurrency is the strongest, to see which nations are taking the most interest in the halving process.

The Top Five Countries Searching for Bitcoin Halving

1. Argentina

With 36.98 searches per 100,000 of the population, the people of Argentina take first place, showing the greatest interest in Bitcoin halving. The surge in national curiosity is likely driven by the publicity around the forthcoming meeting between the new Argentinian President, Javier Milei, and the chief executive of bitcoin technology company Jan3, Samson Mow, who advised El Salvador on its adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender. Milei is a big fan of the cryptocurrency, with his campaign speeches, delivered in the face of catastrophic levels of hyperinflation, making promises to disband Argentina’s central bank and dollarize the economy. While he has stopped short of committing to adopt Bitcoin in Argentina, he has praised the cryptocurrency for returning money to its original creator: the private sector. It’s no wonder that Argentina is watching the halving process so intently: Spanish-speaking El Salvador, which became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, has reaped huge rewards with soaring prices seeing the country sitting on $84 million in unrealized profit.

2. Canada

While search volumes in Canada are less than a third of those seen in Argentina, an overall total of 10.00 searches per 100,000 of the population sees the North American nation take second spot. It is perhaps unsurprising that halving is a hot topic in Canada, as the country also ranks in first place for the number of searches for Bitcoin, with an incredible 1307.33 monthly searches per 100,000 of the population.

3. United Kingdom

With a gap of just 1.31% between the UK’s search volume of 9.87 per 100,000 and Canada’s of 10.0 per 100,000, Brits come third in the rankings for interest in Bitcoin halving. With 70% of the country’s cryptocurrency owners adopting Bitcoin, it’s hardly any wonder that the forthcoming halving has gripped the nation’s interest. Crypto is really beginning to take off in the UK, and on March 11th the UK’s financial watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) became the latest regulator to pave the way for more people to invest in and track the value of Bitcoin.

4. United States

Also keen to promote the more mainstream use of cryptocurrency, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently legislated to approve the trading of funds holding Bitcoin on the US stock exchange. With crypto becoming more and more embodied in daily life, it’s no surprise to see the country in the global top five, with 7.62 Bitcoin halving searches per 100,000 of the population.

5. Turkey

With 2.32 searches for Bitcoin halving per 100,000 of the population, Turkey takes fifth place, despite its figures being 15 times smaller than Argentina’s. Cryptocurrency is extremely popular in the Islamic country, often perceived as a necessity and offering freedom from inflation, national currency and the constraints of corporate life.

The Bottom Five Countries Searching ‘Bitcoin Halving’

Bitcoin halving may have the populations of Argentina, Canada and the United Kingdom heading to their computers to seek out more information, but there are some countries where it’s on nobody’s radar. The following five nations all clocked significantly less than 1 search per 100,000 of the population. Therefore in all these instances, Argentina was 37 times more interested in Bitcoin halving than any of these destinations:

1. Bangladesh

Bangladesh is ranked 17th on the global crypto-adoption index, with its population even more likely to dabble in cryptocurrency than Canada’s, which is ranked 19th. However, searches for Bitcoin halving are phenomenally low, with an incidence of just 0.09 per 100,000 of the population, which is almost certainly attributable to the fact that Bangladesh is one of just nine countries in the world which has made Bitcoin illegal.

2. India

When it comes to cryptocurrency adoption, India truly leads the pack. The country is ranked at number one on the global crypto index, notwithstanding India’s decision to place a high rate of capital gains tax on cryptocurrency profits, which, at 30%, far exceeds the rate applicable to realisations from other investments such as equities. While crypto is taking off, it would seem that interest in owning Bitcoin and interest in how it’s created is not quite the same thing, with searches for Bitcoin halving standing at just at 0.13 per 100,000 of the population.

3. Japan

Despite sitting at the cutting-edge of most things in the tech world, Japan exhibits little interest in Bitcoin halving, with just 0.28 searches per 100,000 of the population. It is in many ways surprising that Bitcoin halving is not being researched more in the nation, given that Bitcoin reached a high in Japan during February 2023 at the same time as the Yen’s historic decline against the dollar which hit a record 33-year low.

4. Pakistan

May 2023 saw Pakistan begin to take steps to ban the use of cryptocurrencies within the country, so it isn’t too surprising to see that the Islamic country recorded just 0.33 searches per 100,000 of the population for Bitcoin halving. Despite this, Pakistan ranks 8th in the world on the global crypto index, with 20 million Pakistanis holding crypto. With the Pakistani rupee at an all-time-low against the US dollar, it will be a challenge to move the nation away from cryptocurrencies.

5. Russia

Cryptocurrency is legal in Russia, but its use is restricted. Banks and exchanges must all be registered with the Central Bank, and crypto cannot be used as a payment method. Owing to current economic sanctions against Russia, many trading platforms have also blocked Russian wallet addresses. These are just two reasons why the search volumes for Bitcoin halving are so low within the country, at just 0.35 per 100,000.

The Impact of Bitcoin Halving is Not Widely Understood

The statistics we have studied demonstrate highly varied levels of interest in Bitcoin halving across the world. Argentinians are plainly waiting with baited breath to see whether they will follow El Salvador’s lead and make cryptocurrency legal tender, and are understandably keen to understand how halving will affect the current all-time-high of the cryptocurrency.

For many other nations, however, and even in those where cryptocurrency usage is relatively high amongst the population, it would appear that the concept of halving and its potential impact on values is not widely understood.

Ryan Matthews, expert at Bankless Times, believes that interest in the Bitcoin halving will very likely follow the event:

"As with centralised national currencies, the general population tends not to have a great understanding of what drives fluctuations in value. For many, Bitcoin halving will not be a familiar concept and those who have got into cryptocurrency within the past four years will never have encountered a halving event. It will not be until people begin to witness the real world practical effects – typically, an increase in value as the currency becomes more scarce, and a decrease in the profitability of mining – that they will start to ask: what’s driving this?”

Ryan Matthews, expert at Bankless Times

Methodology

We took the top twenty countries from the Chainalysis’ Global Crypto Index and for each determined the average number of monthly searches for the terms ‘Bitcoin’ and ‘Bitcoin halving’ using Google Keyword Planner.

We then looked at the population data for each of these countries, taken from Worldometers, and divided the number of monthly searches by that figure. The resulting figure was then multiplied by 100,000 to give us the average number of searches per 100,000 of the population. This provides a fairer metric for comparison. The figures were then ranked from largest to smallest in order to determine which countries had the highest search volumes.

Please note that while China features in the Global Crypto Index, Google is banned within the country so we were unable to determine the search metrics for the country.