Bankless · Monday, September 28, 2026
Ben Cowen notes a consistent downtrend in social interest and YouTube views for crypto since 2021, attributing the recent spike in YouTube views to an algorithm change rather than organic growth. He presents data showing stagnant growth in subscribers, Twitter followers, and app rankings as evidence that broader retail interest has not returned.
“So social interest in crypto has only been going down for the last five years. And yeah, you could paint it, you could say it's because of... you know, people's fascination with meme coins last cycle. And, you know, you could argue one of the reasons Ethereum underperformed last cycle is because people just got distracted by garbage, right? Like random crap and stuff.”
“So my views for forever, like I was getting around 100,000 views a video. Now I'm getting like 200,000 views a video. So starting in August of this year, which is probably exactly when you notice the change, starting in August, YouTube changed the way they count views.”
“Unfortunately, the bump we saw on YouTube hasn't really been... corroborated other places.”