- As we close out 2021, it’s worth reflecting back to how the word “NFT” infiltrated our daily discourse. Collins Dictionary selected “NFT” as the Word of the Year. Collins managing director Alex Beecroft explained: “It’s unusual for an abbreviation to experience such a meteoric rise in usage, but the data we have from the Collins Corpus reflects the remarkable ascendancy of the NFT in 2021.”
- Using Google Trends, we can see how many Google searches occurred in the past 90 days.
- Amazingly, on Dec. 17, 2021, Google searches for “NFT” in the United States surpassed searches for Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and ethereum for the first time ever.
- It lasted only a single day, December 17, 2021.
- Of course, on December 17, Adidas, Bored Ape Yacht Club, gmoney, and PUNKS Comics launched their much anticipated “Into the Metaverse” NFTs. That appears to be what drove the Google searches. The top 4 related queries were: (1) adidas nft +550%, (2) whats a nft +200%, (3) melania nft +170%, and (4) whats an nft +100%.
- Yes, Melania Trump announced her first NFT drop the day before, Dec. 16.
- Even more interesting in the spike of Google searches for NFT, the states with the higher percentages of Google searches for NFTs compared to searches for cryptocurrency, bitcoin, and ethereum were (% indicates for each state, the percentage of searches for NFT vs the other three words):
- West Virginia: 80% NFTs
- New Mexico: 59%
- South Dakota: 58%
- District of Columbia: 50%
- Iowa: 50%
- Maryland: 46%
- Connecticut: 45%
- Arkansas: 42%
- Indiana: 42%
- Missouri: 38%
- Delaware: 38%
- North Carolina: 37%
- Arizona: 36%
- Kentucky: 36%
- Tennessee: 36%
- Oregon: 35%
- Washington: 34%
- Florida: 34%
- Utah: 34%
- Michigan: 34%