The number of retail investors registering for an account with Japanese cryptocurrency exchange bitbank spiked by 40% in the week after the Bitcoin bloodbath.

The March 12 meltdown saw the price of Bitcoin (BTC) drop to a new 2020 low at $3,775. An official blog post by bitbank market analyst Yuya Hasegawa reveals that Bitcoin trade volume and account registrations both saw a significant surge in the wake of the crash.

Even the number of users going through KYC was above average on the day of the BTC downturn and the following couple of days.

Hasegawa contrasts the current situation to the period between November to December 2018 when the price of Bitcoin ground down. In that case, “interest in the crypto market as a whole went down and bitbank’s daily account registrations took a hit.”

However, the price saw a 60% rebound while sustaining high volumes soon after the recent crash, which suggests to Hasegawa “the intent to buy the dip is quite obvious”:

“When we take the increased daily account registrations into consideration, we can once again deduce that the current market recovery is driven largely by retail investors. Furthermore, as Forbes reports, this phenomenon is likely to be global, as Kraken, a San Francisco-based crypto exchange, experienced a steep increase in account registrations after March 12.”

Bitcoin halving makes it a safe bet

In just under 49 days, BTC will experience a halving where the block reward will decrease to 6.25 BTC. The last time this happened was in 2016.

Hasegawa writes that data from Google Trends suggests that investors in Japan and around the world are well aware of the possible price impact of the halving and will seize on any price drop to add to their holdings: