To the moon.
DogeCoin started as a parody of cryptocurrencies, but Tuesday’s rise in price is no joke. The altcoin hit a record 60 cents on Tuesday, flying past its previous high of 43 cents, though it’s now stabalized around 55 cents. Even if DogeCoin was only briefly over 60 cents, it’s still a new milestone in DogeCoin’s miraculous 2021. Back in January, when each token was worth around 1 cent, Doge devotees had dreams of the coin hitting 10 cents in value.
The price of DogeCoin started ticking up over the weekend. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is Doge’s highest-profile supporter, and his tweets related to the cryptocurrency tend to lead to a jump in its value. Musk posted a tweet last week that referenced The Dogefather and his upcoming hosting gig on Saturday Night Live May 8.
Additionally, trading platforms eToro and Gemini listed the memecoin, drastically expanding its reach. eToro alone has 20 million users, who can now easily buy DogeCoin through its platform. The spike in DogeCoin trading seems to have caused issues for the Robinhood investing app, which said it was experiencing issues with cryptocurrency trading, likely due to the demand.
If you’re familiar with cryptocurrency, you know Bitcoin and maybe Ethereum. Those are the two biggest cryptocurrencies, but underneath them is an entire market of smaller ones called “altcoins” — or, sometimes, “shitcoins.” These are like the penny stocks of the cryptocurrency world. Many aim or claim to have utility, or improve facets of the Ethereum blockchain, upon which most altcoins are built. Others are “memecoins,” which rise and fall in popularity simply because they’re kind of funny.
Created in 2013, DogeCoin was the first such memecoin. There are many others, and they’re preposterous. One simply called Meme launched in August at $1 and now trades at over $2,000.