(Source: http://biznes-v-shvejtsarii.ru)

Crypto-currency has become the phenomenon of the year.

This is said in the study of search queries of Yandex users in 2017. The top ten phenomena that attracted the greatest interest of users of the search service also included new banknotes of 200 and 2000 roubles and blockchain technology.

The users’ requests on crypto-currency mainly concerned the bitcoin to rouble exchange rate and the organization of bitcoin mining. The wide popularity of crypto-currency in 2017 was associated with a sharp increase in bitcoin and etherium rates. The price of the latter rose 25 times in the first half of the year, and the price of bitcoin has jumped from 1 thousand to 16 thousand dollars since the beginning of the year.

The popularity of mining became one of the reasons for the deficit of video cards that occurred on the domestic market in summer. Subsequently Sberbank took some of the blame for this on itself. Video cards were bought for the artificial intelligence laboratory created by the country’s largest bank.