Readers don’t need to be told that there has been a boom in crypto trading since the US election ended with a Trump victory last week.
Search volumes for ‘buy Bitcoin’ are at their highest levels globally for the last 12 months.
The consequence is that some brokers and crypto firms are (unsurprisingly) shooting up in the app store rankings.
In the UAE, Capital.com is at 7th spot in Free Finance Apps in the iOS store. Apart from a couple of points in late 2022 and early 2023, this is the highest ranking the broker’s app has ever had in the UAE.
Markets.com is also seeing a large volume of downloads from the Gulf state and currently sits in second spot in free finance downloads for iPhone. However, that is in line with historical levels, with the firm seeming to rise and fall dramatically, suggesting it’s more due to some kind of ad spend strategy.
Over in the UK, eToro is at its highest level in free finance app downloads on iPhone in the last 12 months.
Crypto.com and Binance have also seen a surge in downloads. The former appears to do heavy ad spend around crypto events. Within the iOS store, the company appears to be bidding on thousands of keywords (including ‘eToro’).
Across the world in Thailand, it’s also notable that local crypto exchange Bitkub has hit its highest ranking in the last 12 months in the Thai iOS store and one of its highest rankings ever since the app was launched in 2020.
Bitkub is one of the few firms to actually have local approval to operate a crypto exchange from the Thai regulator.
The final market that looks particularly interesting is Switzerland.
Swissquote is at its highest level in the iOS store in the past 12 months, as is crypto trading firm Bitget. Crypto.com is also 7th in the iOS store for finance apps in the country.
Can we learn anything from all of this?
It seems to be a mix of branding + bidding.
If you look at Swissquote, the top source of traffic appears to have been ‘Swissquote’. In other words, people knew Swissquote already and knew that, if they wanted to buy BTC, that was a good company to go for.
On the other hand, it’s clear that a lot of app traffic is also driven by ad spend, something that Markets.com and Crypto.com are doing.
What strikes me is that in some ways this mirrors the sort of prep a dealing desk would have to do in the run up to volatility.
When you are in the middle of a boom, you need to be prepared to spend in a smart way. It’s plausible that a lot of its traffic is organic but Crypto.com seems to be quite good at also using spend to get a lot of downloads whenever there is a surge in crypto trading interest.