Is this the impact of rising bitcoin prices?
Yes, one of many factors that affects bitcoin fame. Maybe higher price is the most interesting part for new adopters and trigger when they know it was $1, $100, or $1000 in the early of this year and could leap to an amazing price within 2 months.
Bitcoin deserve so much attention from people who want to diversify their wealth or looking for another investment.
Furthermore, bitcoiners believe that bitcoin could reach fantastic price such as $100K and even $1 Million, but who knows.
As you can see how Ethereum's latest network problem reflects that Ethereum is now facing the same issue as bitcoin(scaling) and that also means that Ethereum is now become more popular.