SINGAPORE (Reuters) – No kidding. Elon’s acquisition of Twitter by his mask has breathed new life into the sails of Dogecoin, the meme cryptocurrency for which he rose to fame.
Dogecoin price doubled after Tesla tycoon completed $44 billion deal. It was trading at about $0.07 until Oct. 27, when Musk announced his ownership by tweeting, “The bird is free.” After 5 days, it was $0.16.
It may not sound like much, but according to data platform CoinGecko, the market value of highly volatile cryptocurrencies has reached $21 billion.
Not bad for a coin created as a “joke” to satirize wild speculation in the crypto market and named after the Shiba Inu internet meme.
Trading Dogecoin around Elons tweets has become a lucrative form of speculation, said Matthew Dibb, COO of Stack Fund, a Singapore-based crypto investment manager. said.
Musk has played a major role in the rise of dogecoin since it was casually launched by two software engineers in 2013. His tweets expressing support for dogecoin, including what he calls “the people’s crypto,” helped its price skyrocket out of nowhere. About 4,000% in 2021.
Crypto watchers said the latest price spike following the Twitter deal was fueled by investor bets that Musk would make Doge part of the platform’s payment system.
There is a lot of speculation that Twitter will provide a testbed for doge adoption and experimentation with different uses, Dibb added.
DOGE AND SHIB
Dogecoin has since lost some of its gains, hovering around $0.12, according to CoinGecko.
The so-called memecoin peaked at $0.63 in May last year, but since then macro clouds and investor indifference to risky markets have pushed it along with other prominent crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ether. been crushed. Even after the recent rise, Doge is down 57% in the last 12 months.
Nevertheless, cryptocurrency market news website Coindesk said in its October CoinDesk Market Index that doge was the top performer among 150 digital assets as its price doubled. rice field.
According to CoinMarketCap, the company had a 1% share of the $1 trillion global cryptocurrency market capitalization in the year to the end of October, a fraction of Bitcoin’s 39%. It is currently 1.58%.
The Doge has the same Japanese dog breed motif as the Doge, and has launched other dog-themed coins, centered around the Shiba Inu dog designed to be compatible with the Ethereum blockchain. Shib, which trades at just $0.00001, has jumped a third in the days since Musk completed his Twitter deal.
Unlike Bitcoin, doge and shib both have nearly unlimited supply, so it takes more than just speculative hoarding to push prices higher.
At the mercy of Musk?
The bet that Musk might allow cryptocurrency payments with dog tokens was sparked last week when he tweeted a photo of a Shiba Inu wearing a Twitter T-shirt.
However, the early rise has stalled as many crypto investors are baffled by how serious he is about Dogecoin.
Musk, the world’s richest man, called Dogecoin a “hustle” on a talk show last May, causing its price to plummet.
And in January of this year, Tesla began accepting Dogecoin to pay for goods like the Giga Texas belt buckle and a mini electric car.
Musk’s newly launched perfume “Burnt Hair” is also available at the Doge.
Reporting by Vidya Ranganathan. Edited by Pravin Char
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