Interestingly, breaking down the search volume on Google for the last 12 months by region... Cyprus is nowhere to be found. I never really believed the notion, but it's not impossible. I'm wondering why people are making this assumption. Is there more data related to this correlation (Cyprus' interest in BTC vs BTC rising value)?
Edit: Filtering by past 7, 30, 90 days yields about the same results, and still no sign of Cyprus.
Although some are making the claim that the rise in price is due to panicking Cypriots buying Bitcoin I think the more credible (though not convincing to me) claim made is that the Cyprus situation is giving the other countries, particularly southern European weaker Euro nations the jitters with respect to what will happen in theirs.
But the search results don't appear to back this up either. Maybe to the extent the Cyprus story is having an impact it's more likely that it is reaffirming the pre-existing beliefs of people world-over who see the banks and traditional currencies as being in a precarious position thereby increasing their confidence (and holding) in Bitcoin. And given that a reasonably high proportion of such people know enough about and/or are involved with Bitcoin already then this wouldn't necessarily show up in the search statistics. But then again my theory, by my having nothing of substance to support it, is pure conjecture too
And in the meantime the oversimplified version doesn't need to be true to sell papers/TV news slots providing it makes a good story!
