How is the crypto economy in France reacting after the ruling of the Nanterre Commercial Court which in fact compares bitcoin to a currency?
According to Google Trends, on March 9th, 2020 there was the highest peak of searches for the word “bitcoin” in the last three months.
The curious thing is that this peak did not occur on the day of the news of the ruling, i.e. March 6th, rather only three days later.
And given that on both March 6th and 7th the search volume actually decreased, it can be said that the news of the ruling had no significant impact.
In spite of this, on March 9th the search volume has more than doubled compared to the previous days, exceeding even the previous peak of the last three months, on February 9th, 2020.
Extending the analysis to the last 12 months, it turns out that at the end of June 2019 there was an even greater peak in searches, but that was due to the sharp increase in the price of bitcoin that was being recorded then. On March 9th, 2020 the maximum price was about $8,100 or so while in the second half of June 2019 it had actually exceeded $11,000.
With regard to the trading volumes in France, for example, there’s no difference in terms of volumes on LocalBitcoins, because the website actually divides volumes by currency and not by country.
France has its own currency in common with other countries since it uses the Euro, so it is not possible to extrapolate such data from websites like LocalBitcoins.
However, it is possible to analyze for example the volumes of a French crypto exchange, Paymium. The graph shows us that during the days when the ruling was announced, volumes remained low, while they increased a lot on March 8th and 9th, coinciding with the first of the recent sharp drops in the price of bitcoin.
It is this sustained drop that has probably produced the recent peak in searches, with volumes that on Paymium remained sustained even yesterday.
The difference lies in the fact that sales prevailed on the 8th and 9th of March on Paymium, whereas yesterday it was the purchases that prevailed.
It is too early to assess whether the ruling of the Nanterre Commercial Court, which in fact compared bitcoin to currency, is having any effect on the French cryptocurrency market, especially because in these hectic days there are other phenomena in place much more influential than any other factor.
France: the case of Tezos
One interesting thing, however, is the recent success of Tezos, a project born in France and which in the past even received the endorsement of the French Minister of the Economy.
The price of its XTZ token has literally skyrocketed since January 2020, when it went from $1.33 to $3.90 in just over a month and a half, with an incredible gain of almost 200% in fifty days. The price then fell, however, but remained always above $2, meaning that it retained a gain of almost 50% compared to the beginning of the year.
In the last week, however, its price has always dropped, proving to have no correlation with the events concerning bitcoin in France.
To date, it is not possible to predict whether or not the attitude of investors in France towards cryptocurrencies will change in the coming weeks.
