Viewership of crypto content on YouTube has declined to its lowest level since January 2021 following a sharp retreat over the past three months.
On Sunday, ITC Crypto founder Benjamin Cowen shared a 30-day moving average of views across various crypto YouTube channels, highlighting the drop.
“So it’s not just X and an algorithm change,” he said regarding a similar fall in engagement across crypto channels on microblogging platform X.
It has “collapsed across all platforms, and has had a noticeable local decline since just October,” commented crypto YouTuber Tom Crown.
“In reality, it’s been in a ‘bear market’ since 2021, having never reached even near those highs.”
“This is literally bear market levels of social interest,” said Bitcoin investor “Polaris XBT.”
The trend also reinforces the premise that institutions have been driving markets this cycle, with retail taking a back seat.
Retail is exhausted by pump and dump schemes
YouTube content creator Jesus Martinez echoed the sentiment, saying that he grew his channel from the start of 2022, adding, “I’ve experienced some intense peaks, but nothing ever came close to the few videos I created in the peak of 2021.”
TikTok content creator “Cloud9 Markets” said it could also be due to all the scams and pump and dump schemes for “ponzi” altcoins. “Retail is tired of getting rekt,” they added.
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“They’ve likely pivoted into precious metals/macro. People want returns, not stories of when returns could come,” observed Cointelegraph’s head of social media, Marc Shawn Brown.
“2025 was hard. -7% return for BTC and palladium, rhodium, cobalt, silver, and gold all outperformed,” he said.
Social sentiment is stabilizing
It is not all bad news, however. Social sentiment towards Bitcoin (BTC) “is clearly getting more and more positive, not that the bleeding has at least shown mild signs of reversing,” said on-chain analytics platform Santiment on Friday.
It added that the $90,000 level is going to be crucial for retailers to stay positive.
Meanwhile, social sentiment towards Ethereum (ETH) “appears to be scattered, and not showing any consistent trends as of now,” it added.
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